FAMILIAR STUDIES 



OF 



MEN AND BOOKS 



[Author^ s Edition] 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

AN INLAND VOYAGE. 

EDINBURGH. 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY. 

VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE. 

FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS. 

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS. 

TREASURE ISLAND. 

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS. 

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. 

PRINCE OTTO. 

STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. 

KIDNAPPED. 

THE MERRY MEN AND OTHER TALES AND FABLES. 

UNDERWOODS. 

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS. 

MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN. 

THE BLACK ARROW. 

THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. 

BALLADS. 

FATHER DAMIEN: An Open Letter. 

ACROSS THE PLAINS. 

A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY. 

ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS. 

(WITH MRS. STEVENSON.) 
MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS: The Dynamiter. 



WITH LLOYD OSBOURNE.) 



THE WRONG BOX. 
THE WRECKER. 



FAMILIAR STUDIES 



OF 



MEN AND BOOKS 



BY 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 






NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1902 

[Ail rights reserved\ 



7K ^^^ 



t 






v.v^tj'^'if' 



i 



TO 

THOMAS STEVENSON 

CIVIL ENGINEER 

BY WHOSE DEVICES THE GREAT SEA LIGHTS IN EVERY QUARTER 

OF THE WORLD NOW SHINE MORE BRIGHTLY 

THIS VOLUME IS IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE 
DEDICATED BY HIS SON 

THE AUTHOR 



CONTENTS 



Preface, ...... 

Victor Hugo's Romances, 

Some Aspects of Robert Burns, . 

Walt Whitman, . . , . . 

Henry David Ihoreau: His Charac 

ter and Opinions, 
Yoshida-Torajiro. .... 
Francois Villon, Student, Poet, and 

Housebreaker, .... 
Charles of Orleans, 
Samuel Pepys, .... 

John Knox and Women, 



PAoE 

7 
27 

59 
104 

137 
174 

191 
229 

275 

3C7 



PREFACE 

BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

These studies are collected from the monthly press. 
One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in Macmil- 
lan's, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazifie. To the 
Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks ; first, that I 
was received there in the very best society, and under 
the eye of the very best of editors ; and second, that 
the proprietors have allowed me to republish so con- 
siderable an amount of copy. 

These nine worthies have been brought too:ether 
from many different ages and countries. Not the 
most erudite of men could be perfectly prepared to 
deal with so many and such various sides of human 
life and manners. To pass a true judgment upon 
Knox and Burns implies a grasp upon the very deep- 
est strain of thought in Scotland, — a country far more 
essentially different from England than many parts of 
America ; for, in a sense, the first of these men re- 
created Scotland, and the second is its most essentially 



8 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

national production. To treat fitly of Hugo and Vil- 
lon would involve yet wider knowledge, not only of a 
country foreign to the author by race, history, and re- 
ligion, but of the growth and liberties of art. Of the 
two Americans, Whitman and Thoreau, each is the 
type of something not so much realized as widely 
sought after among the late generations of their coun- 
trymen ; and to see them clearly in a nice relation to 
the society that brought them forth, an author would 
require a large habit of life among modern Ameri- 
cans. As for Yoshida, I have already disclaimed re- 
sponsibility ; it was but my hand that held the pen. 

In truth, these are but the readings of a literary 
vagrant. One book led to another, one study to an- 
other. The first was published with trepidation. 
Since no bones were broken, the second was launched 
with greater confidence. So, by insensible degrees, a 
young man of our generation acquires, in his own eyes, 
a kind of roving judicial commission through the 
ages ; and, having once escaped the perils of the 
Freemans and the Furnivalls, sets himself up to 
right the wrongs of universal history and criticism. 
Now, it is one thing to write with enjoyment on a 
subject while the story is hot in your mind from re- 
cent reading, colored with recent prejudice ; and it is 
quite another business to put these writings coldly 



PREFA CE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 9 

forth again in a bound volume. We are most of us 
attached to our opinions ; that is one of the " natural 
affections" of which we hear so much in youth ; but 
few of us are altogether free from paralyzing doubts 
and scruples. For my part, I have a small idea of 
the degree of accuracy possible to man, and I feel sure 
these studies teem with error. One and all were writ- 
ten with genuine interest in the subject ; many, how- 
ever, have been conceived and finished with imperfect 
knowledge ; and all have lain, from beginning to 
end, under the disadvantages inherent in this style of 
writing. 

Of these disadvantages a word must here be said. 
The writer of short studies, having to condense in a 
few pages the events of a whole lifetime, and the effect 
on his own mind of many various volumes, is bound, 
above all things, to make that condensation logical 
and striking. For the only justification of his writing 
at all is that he shall present a brief, reasoned, and 
memorable view. By the necessity of the case, all the 
more neutral circumstances are omitted from his nar- 
rative ; and that of itself, by the negative exaggeration 
of which I have spoken in the text, lends to the mat- 
ter in hand a certain false and specious glitter. By 
the necessity of the case, again, he is forced to view 
his subject throughout in a particular illumination, 



lo PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

like a studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, he 
must nearly break his sitter's neck to get the proper 
shadows on the portrait. It is from one side only 
that he has time to represent his subject. The side 
selected will either be the one most striking to himself, 
or the one most obscured by controversy ; and in 
both cases that will be the one most liable to strained 
and sophisticated reading. In a biography, this and 
that is displayed ; the hero is seen at home, playing 
the flute ; the different tendencies of his work come, 
one after another, into notice ; and thus something 
like a true, general impression of the subject may at 
last be struck. But in the short study, the writer, 
having seized his " point of view," must keep his eye 
steadily to that. He seeks, perhaps, rather to differ- 
entiate than truly to characterize. The proportions of 
the sitter must be sacrificed to the proportions of the 
portrait ; the lights are heightened, the shadows over- 
charged ; the chosen expression, continually forced, 
may degenerate at length into a grimace ; and we 
have at best something of a caricature, at worst a 
calumny. Hence, if they be readable at all, and hang 
together by their own ends, the peculiar convincing 
force of these brief representations. They take so lit- 
tle a while to read, and yet in that little while the sub- 
ject is so repeatedly introduced in the same light and 



PREFACE, BV WAY OF CRITICISM. ii 

with the same expression, that, by sheer force of repe- 
tition, that view is imposed upon the reader. The 
two Enghsh masters of the style, Macaulay and Car- 
lyle, largely exemplify its dangers. Carlyle, indeed, 
had so much more depth and knowledge of the heart, 
his portraits of mankind are felt and rendered with so 
much more poetic comprehension, and he, like his 
favorite Ram Dass, had a fire in his belly so much 
more hotly burning than the patent reading lamp by 
which Macaulay studied, that it seems at first sight 
hardly fair to bracket them together. But the " point 
of view" was imposed by Carlyle on the men he 
judged of in his writings with an austerity not only 
cruel but almost stupid. They are too often broken 
outright on the Procrustean bed ; they are probably 
always disfigured. The rhetorical artifice of Macaulay 
is easily spied ; it will take longer to appreciate the 
moral bias of Carlyle. So with all writers who insist 
on forcing some significance from all that comes be- 
fore them ; and the writer of short studies is bound, 
by the necessity of the case, to write entirely in that 
spirit. What he cannot vivify he should omit. 

Had it been possible to rewrite some of these papers, 
I hope I should have had the courage to attempt it. 
But it is not possible. Short studies are, or should 
be, things woven like a carpet, from which it is impos- 



12 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

sible to detach a strand. What is perverted has its 
place there forever, as a part of the technical means by 
which what is right has been presented. It is only 
possible to write another study, and then, with a new 
" point of view," would follow new perversions and 
perhaps a fresh caricature. Hence, it will be, at least, 
honest to offer a few grains of salt to be taken with the 
text ; and as some words of apology, addition, cor- 
rection, or amplification fall to be said on almost every 
study in the volume, it will be most simple to run 
them over in their order. But this must not be taken 
as a propitiatory offering to the gods of shipwreck ; I 
trust my cargo unreservedly to the chances of the sea ; 
and do not, by criticising myself, seek to disarm the 
wrath of other and less partial critics. 

Hugo s Romances. — This is an instance of the 
" point of view. " The five romances studied with a 
different purpose might have given different results, 
even with a critic so warmly interested in their favor. 
The great contemporary master of wordmanship, and 
indeed of all literary arts and technicalities, had not 
unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But it is best to dwell 
on merits, for it is these that are most often overlooked. 

Burns. — I have left the introductory sentences on 
Principal Shairp, partly to explain my own paper, 
which was merely supplemental to his amiable but im- 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 13 

perfect book, partly because that book appears to me 
truly misleading both as to the character and the genius 
of Burns. This seems ungracious, but Mr. Shairp 
has himself to blame ; so good a Wordsworthian was 
out of character upon that stage. 

This half apology apart, nothing more falls to be 
said except upon a remark called forth by my study 
in the columns of a literary Review. The exact terms 
in which that sheet disposed of Burns I cannot now 
recall ; but they were to this effect — that Burns was a 
bad man, the impure vehicle of fine verses ; and that 
this was the view to which all criticism tended. Now 
I knew% for my own part, that it was with the pro- 
foundest pity, but with a growing esteem, that I 
studied the man's desperate efforts to do righi ; and 
the more I reflected, the" stranger it appeared to me 
that any thinking being should feel otherwise. The 
complete letters shed, indeed, a light on the depths to 
w^hich Burns had sunk in his character of Don Juan, 
but they enhance in the same proportion the hopeless 
nobility of his marrying Jean. That I ought to have 
stated this more noisily I now see ; but that any one 
should fail to see it for himself, is to me a thing both 
incomprehensible and worthy of open scorn. If 
Burns, on the facts dealt with in this study, is to be 
called a bad man, I question very much whether either 



14 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

I or the writer in the Review have ever encountered 
what it would be fair to call a good one. All have 
some fault. The fault of each grinds down the hearts 
of those about him, and — let us not blink the truth — 
hurries both him and them into the grave. And when 
we find a man persevering indeed, in his fault, as all 
of us do, and openly overtaken, as not all of us are, 
by its consequences, to gloss the matter over, with too 
polite biographers, is to do the work of the wrecker 
disfiguring beacons on a perilous seaboard ; but to 
call him bad, with a self-righteous chuckle, is to be 
talking in one's sleep with Heedless and Too-bold in 
the arbor. 

Yet it is undeniable that much anger and distress is 
raised in many quarters by the least attempt to state 
plainly, what every one well knows, of Burns' s profli- 
gacy, and of the fatal consequences of his marriage. 
And for this there are perhaps two subsidiary rea- 
sons. For, first, there is, in our drunken land, a cer- 
tain privilege extended to drunkenness. In Scotland, 
in particular, it is almost respectable, above all when 
compared with any '* irregularity between the sexes." 
The selfishness of the one, so much more gross in es- 
sence, is so much less immediately conspicuous in its 
results that our demiurgeous Mrs. Grundy smiles 
apologetically on its victims. It is often said — I have 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 15 

heard it with tliese ears— that drunkenness " may lead 
to vice." Now I did not think it at all proved that 
Burns was what is called a drunkard ; and I was 
obliged to dwell very plainly on the irregularity and 
the too frequent vanity and meanness of his relations 
to women. Hence, in the eyes of many, my study 
was a step tov/ard the demonstration ot Burns' s radical 
badness. 

But second, there is a certain class, professors of 
that low morality so greatly more distressing than the 
better sort of vice, to whom you must never represent 
an act that was virtuous in itself, as attended by any 
other consequences than a large family and fortune. 
To hint that Burns's marriage had an evil influence 
is, with this class, to deny the moral law. Yet such 
is the fact. It was bravely done ; but he had pre- 
sumed too far on his strength. One after another the 
lights of his life went out, and he fell from circle to 
circle to the dishonored sickbed of the end. And 
surely for any one that has a thing to call a soul he 
shines out tenfold more nobly in the failure of that 
frantic effort to do right, than if he had turned on his 
heel with Worldly Wiseman, married a congenial 
spouse, and lived orderly and died reputably an old 
man. It is his chief title that he refrained from " the 
wrong that amendeth wrong. ' ' But the common, 



1 6 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

trashy mind of our generation is still aghast, like the 
Jews of old, at any word of an unsuccessful virtue. 
Job has been written and read ; the tower of Siloam 
fell nineteen hundred years ago ; yet we have still to 
desire a little Christianity, or, failing that, a little even 
of that rude, old, Norse nobility of soul, which saw 
virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not 
shaken in its faith. 

Walt Whitman. — This is a case of a second difficulty 
which lies continually before the writer of critical 
studies : that he has to mediate betv/een the author 
whom he loves and the public who are certainly in- 
different and frequently averse. Many articles had 
been written on this notable man. One after another 
had leaned, in my eyes, either to praise or blame un- 
duly. In the last case, they helped to blindfold our 
fastidious public to an inspiring writer ; in the other, 
by an excess of unadulterated praise, they moved the 
more candid to revolt. I was here on the horns of a 
dilemma ; and between these horns I squeezed myself 
with perhaps some loss to the substance of the paper. 
Seeing so much in Whitman that was merely ridicu- 
lous, as well as so much more that was unsurpassed in 
force and fitness, — seeing the true prophet doubled, 
as I thought, in places with the Bull in a China Shop, 
■ — it appeared best to steer a mid'dls course, and to 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 17 

laugh with the scorners when I thought they had any 
excuse, while I made haste to rejoice with the rejoicers 
over what is imperishably good, lovely, human, or 
divine, in his extraordinary poems. That was perhaps 
the right road ; yet I cannot help feeling that in this 
attempt to trim my sails between an author w^hom I 
love and honor and a public too averse to recognize 
his merit, I have been led into a tone unbecoming 
from one of my stature to one of Whitman's. But 
the good and the great man will go on his way not 
vexed with my little shafts of merriment. He, first of 
any one, will understand how, in the attempt to ex- 
plain him credibly to Mrs. Grundy, I have been led 
into certain airs of the man of the world, which are 
merely ridiculous in me, and were not intentionally 
discourteous to himself. But there is a w^orse side to 
the question ; for in my eagerness to be all things to 
all men, I am afraid I may have sinned against pro- 
portion. It will be enough to say here that Whit- 
man's faults are few and unimportant when they are 
set beside his surprising merits. I had written an- 
other paper full of gratitude for the help that had 
been given me in my life, full of enthusiasm for the 
intrinsic merit of the poems, and conceived in the 
noisiest extreme of youthful eloquence. The present 
study was a rifacimento. From it, with the design 



1 8 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM, 

already mentioned, and in a fit of horror at my old 
excess, the big words and emphatic passages were 
ruthlessly excised. But this sort of prudence is fre- 
quently its own punishment ; along with the exagger- 
ation, some of the truth is sacrificed ; and the result 
is cold, constrained, and grudging. In short, I might 
almost everywhere have spoken more strongly than I 
did. 

Thoreau. — Here is an admirable instance of the 
** point of view ' * forced throughout, and of too earnest 
reflection on imperfect facts. Upon me this pure, 
narrow, sunnily-ascetic Thoreau had exercised a great 
charm. I have scarce written ten sentences since 1 
was introduced to him, but his influence might be 
somewhere detected by a close observer. Still it was 
as a writer that I had made his acquaintance ; I took 
him on his own explicit terms ; and when I learned 
details of his life, they were, by the nature of the case 
and my own parii-pris, read even with a certain vio- 
lence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be 
a perversion more justifiable than that ; yet it was still 
a perversion. The study, indeed, raised so much ire 
in the breast of Dr. Japp (IL A. Page), Thoreau 's 
sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been 
men, I please myself with thinking, of less temper and 
justice, the difference might have made us enemies in- 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 19 

Stead of making us friends. To him who knew the 
man from the inside, many of my statements sounded 
hke inversions made on purpose ; and yet when we 
came to talk of them together, and he had understood 
how 1 was looking at the man through the books, 
while he had long since learned to read the books 
through the man, I believe he understood the spirit in 
which I had been led astray. 

On two most important points, Dr. Japp added to 
my knowledge, and with the same blow fairly de- 
molished that part of my criticism. First, if Thoreau 
were content to dwell by Walden Pond, it was not 
merely with designs of self-improvement, but to serve 
mankind in the highest sense. Hither came the flee- 
ing slave ; thence was he despatched along the road to 
freedom. That shanty in the woods was a station in 
the great Underground Railroad ; that adroit and 
philosophic solitary was an ardent worker, soul and 
body, in that so much more than honorable move- 
ment, which, if atonement were possible for nations, 
should have gone far to wipe away the guilt of slavery. 
But in history sin always meets with condign punish- 
ment ; the generation passes, the offence remains, and 
the innocent must suffer. No underground railroad 
could atone for slavery, even as no bills in Parlia- 
ment can redeem the ancient wrongs of Ireland. But 



2 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

here at least is a new light shed on the Walden 
episode. 

Second, it appears, and the point is capital, that 
Thoreau was once fairly and manfully in love, and, 
with perhaps too much aping of the angel, relin- 
quished the woman to his brother. Even though the 
brother were like to die of it, we have not yet heard 
the last opinion of the woman. But be that as it may, 
we have here the explanation of the *' rarefied and 
freezing air" in which I complained that he had taught 
himself to breathe. Reading the man through the 
books, I took his professions in good faith. He made 
a dupe of me, even as he was seeking to make a dupe 
of himself, wresting philosophy to the needs of his own 
sorrow. But in the light of this new fact, those pages, 
seemingly so cold, are seen to be alive with feeling. 
What appeared to be a lack of interest in the philoso- 
pher turns out to have been a touching insincerity of 
the man to his own heart ; and that fine-spun airy 
theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of 
any quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull 
his pains. The most temperate of living critics once 
marked a passage of my own with a cross and the 
words, ** This seems nonsense. " It not only seemed ; 
it was so. It was a private bravado of my own, which 
I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits, that I 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 2\ 

had grown at last wholly to believe it, and had ended 
by setting it down as a contribution to the theory of 
life. So with (he more icy parts of this philosophy of 
Thoreau's. He was affecting the Spartanism he had 
not ; and the old sentimental wound still bled afresh, 
svhile he deceived himself with reasons. 

Thoreau's theory, in short, was one thing and him- 
self another : of the first, the reader will find what I 
believe to be a pretty faithful statement and a fairly 
just criticism in the study ; of the second he will find 
but a contorted shadow. So much of the man as fitted 
nicely with his doctrines, in the photographer's phrase, 
came out. But that large part which lay outside and 
beyond, for which he had found or sought no formula, 
on which perhaps his philosophy even looked askance, 
is wanting in my study, as it was wanting in the guide 
I followed. In some ways a less serious writer, in all 
ways a nobler man, the true Thoreau still remains to 
be depicted. 

Villon. — I am tempted to regret that I ever wrote 
on this subject, not merely because the paper strikes 
me as too picturesque by half, but because I regarded 
Villon as a bad fellow. Others still think well of him, 
and can find beautiful and human traits where I saw 
nothing but artistic evil ; and by the principle of the 
art, those should have written of the man, and not I. 



22 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

Where you see no good, silence is the best. Though 
this penitence comes too late, it may be well, at least^ 
to give it expression. 

The spirit of Villon is still living in the literature of 
France. Fat Peg is oddly of a piece with the work of 
Zola, the Goncourts, and the infinitely greater Flau- 
bert ; and, while similar in ugliness, still surpasses 
them in native power. The old author, breaking with 
an eclat de voix, out of his tongue-tied century, has 
not yet been touched on his own ground, and still 
gives us the most vivid and shocking impression of 
reality. Even if that were not worth doing at all, it 
would be worth doing as well as he has done it ; for 
the pleasure we take in the author's skill repays us, or 
at least reconciles us to the baseness of his attitude. 
Fat Peg {La Grosse Margot) is typical of much ; it 
is a piece of experience that has nowhere else been 
rendered into literature ; and a kind of gratitude for 
the author's plainness mingles, as we read, with the 
nausea proper to the business. I shall quote here a 
verse of an old students' song, worth laying side 
by side with Villon's startling ballade. This singer, 
also, had an unworthy mistress, but he did not 
choose to share the wages of dishonor ; and it is 
thus, with both wit and pathos, that he laments her 
fall :— 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 23 

Nunc plango florem 

^tatis tenerae 
Nitidiorem 

Veneris sidere : 
Tunc columbinam 

Mentis dulcedinem, 
Nunc serpentinam 
Amaritudinem. 
Verbo rogantes 

Removes ostio, 
Munera dantes . 
Foves cubiculo, 

IIlos abire praecipis 
A quibus nihil accipis, 
Caecos claudosque recipis, 
Viros illustres decipis 
Cum melle venenosaJ 

But our illustrious writer of ballades it was uxiTiecejv 
sary to deceive ; it was the flight of beauty alone, not 
that of honesty or honor, that he lamented in his 
song ; and the nameless mediaeval vagabond has the 
best of the comparison. 

There is now a Villon Society in England ; and 
Mr. John Payne has translated him entirely into Eng- 
lish, a task of unusual difficulty. I regret to find that 
Mr. Payne and I are not always at one as to the 

1 Gaudeamus : Carmina vagorujn selecta. Leipsic. Triibner. iSy-^ 



2 4 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

author's meaning ; in such cases I am bound to sup- 
pose that he is in the right, although the weakness of 
the flesh withholds me from anything beyond a formal 
submission. He is now upon a larger venture, prom- 
ising us at last that complete Arabian Nights to which 
we have all so long looked forward. 

Charles of Orleans. — Perhaps I have done scanty 
justice to the charm of the old Duke's verses, and 
certainly he is too much treated as a fool. The period 
is not sufficiently remembered. What that period 
was, to what a blank of imbecility the human mind 
had fallen, can only be known to those who have 
waded in the chronicles. Excepting Comines and La 
Salle and Villon, I have read no author who did not 
appall me by his torpor ; and even the trial of Joan of 
Arc, conducted as it was by chosen clerks, bears wit- 
ness to a dreary, sterile folly, — a twilight of the mind 
peopled with childish phantoms. In relation to his 
contemporaries, Charles seems quite a lively character. 

It remains for me to acknowledge the kindness of 
Mr. Henry Pyne, who, immediately on the appearance 
of the study, sent me his edition of the Debate between 
the Heralds : a courtesy from the expert to the ama- 
teur only too uncommon in these days. 

Knox. — Knox, the second in order of interest among 
the reformers, lies dead and buried in the works of the 



PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 25 

learned and unreadable IM'Crie. It remains for some 
one to break the tomb and bring him forth, alive again 
and breathing, in a human book. With the best in- 
tentions in the world, I have only added two more 
flagstones, ponderous like their predecessors, to the 
mass of obstruction that buries the reformer from the 
world ; I have touched him in my turn with that 
" mace of death," which Carlyle has attributed to 
Dryasdust ; and my two dull papers are, in the mat- 
ter of dulness, worthy additions to the labors of 
M'Crie. Yet I believe they are worth reprinting in 
the interest of the next biographer of Knox. I trust 
his book may be a masterpiece ; and I indulge the 
hope that my two studies may lend him a hint or per- 
haps spare him a delay in its composition. 

Of the Pepys I can say nothing ; for it has been too 
recently through my hands ; and I still retain some of 
the heat of composition. Yet it may serve as a text 
for the last remark I have to offer. To Pepys I think 
I have been amply just ; to the others, to Burns, 
Thoreau, Whitman, Charles of Orleans, even Villon, 
I have found myself in the retrospect ever too grudg- 
ing of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is 
not easy to see why I should have been most liberal to 
the man of least pretensions. Perhaps some coward- 
ice withheld me from the proper warmth of tone ; per- 



26 PREFACE, BY WAY OF CRITICISM. 

haps it is easier to be just to those nearer us in rank 
of mind. Such at least is the fact, which other critics 
may explain. For these were all men whom, for one 
reason or another, I loved ; or when I did not love 
the men, my love was the greater to their books. 
I had read them and lived with them ; for months they 
were continually in my thoughts ; I seemed to rejoice 
in their joys and to sorrow with them in their griefs ; 
and behold, when I came to write of them, my tone 
was sometimes hardly courteous and seldom wholly 
just. R. L. S. 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

Apres le roman pittoresque mais prosalque de Walter 
Scott il restera un autre roman a creer, plus beau et plus 
complet encore selon nous. C'est le roman, a la fois drame 
et epop6e, pittoresque mais poetique, reel mais ideal, vrai 
mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans Homere. — 
Victor Hugo on Qtientin Durivard. 

Victor Hugo's romances occupy an important posi- 
tion in the history of literature ; many innovations, 
timidly made elsewhere, have in them been carried 
boldly out to their last consequences ; much that was 
indefinite in literary tendencies has attained to definite 
maturity ; many things have come to a point and been 
distinguished one from the other ; and it is only in 
the last romance of all, Quatre Vingt Treize, that this 
culmination is most perfect. This is in the nature of 
things. Men who are in any way typical of a stage of 
progress may be compared more justly to the hand 
upon the dial of the clock, which continues to advance 
as it indicates, than to the stationary milestone, which 
is only the measure of what is past. The movement 
is not arrested. That significant something by which 
the work of such a man differs from that of his prede- 
cessors, goes on disengaging itself and becoming more 
and more articulate and cognizable. The same princi- 



28 VICTOR HUGO' S ROMANCES. 

pie of growth that carried his first book beyond the 
books of previous writers, carries his last book beyond 
his first. And just as the most imbecile production 
of any literary age gives us sometimes the very clew to 
comprehension we have sought long and vainly in 
contemporary masterpieces, so it maybe the very weak- 
est of an author's books that, coming in the sequel of 
many others, enables us at last to get hold of what 
underlies the whole of them — of that spinal marrow 
of significance that unites the work of his life into 
something organic and rational. This is what has 
been done by Qiiatre Vingt Treize for the earlier 
romances of Victor Hugo, and, through them, for a 
whole division of modern literature. We have here 
the legitimate continuation of a long and living literary 
tradition ; and hence, so far, its explanation. When 
many lines diverge from each other in direction so 
slightly as to confuse the eye, we know that we have 
only to produce them to make the chaos plain : this 
is continually so in literary history ; and we shall best 
understand the importance of Victor Hugo's romances 
if we think of them as some such prolongation of one 
of the main lines of literary tendency. 

When we coriipare the novels of Waiter Scott with 
those of the man of genius who preceded him, and 
whom he delighted to honor as a master in the art — 
I mean Henry Fielding— we shall be somewhat puz-. 
zled, at the first moment, to state the difference that 
there is betwefen theste two. Fielding has as much 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 29 

numan science ; has a far firmer hold upon the tiller 
of his story ; has a keen sense of character, which he 
draws (and Scott often does so too) in a rather abstract 
and academical manner ; and finally, is quite as 
humorous and quite as good-humored as the great 
Scotchman. With all these points of resemblance be- 
tween the men, it is astonishing that their work should 
be so different. The fact is, that the English novel 
was looking one way and seeking one set of effects in 
the hands of Fielding ; and in the hands of Scott it 
was looking eagerly in all ways and searching for all 
the effects that by any possibility it could utilize. The 
difference between these two men marks a great en- 
franchisement. With Scott the Romantic movement, 
the movement of an extended Quriosity and an en- 
franchised imagination, has begun. This is a trite 
thing to say ; but trite things are often very indefinitely 
comprehended : and this enfranchisement, in as far as 
it regards the technical change that came over modern 
prose romance, has never perhaps been'explained with 
any clearness. 

To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare 
the two sets of conventions upon which plan's and ro- 
mances are respectively based. The purposes of these 
two arts are so much alike, and they deal so much 
with the same passions and interests, that we are apt 
to forget the fundamental opposition of their methods. 
And yet such a fundamental opposition exists. In 
the drama the action is developed in great measure by 
means of things that remain dutside of the art ; by 



3© VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

means of real things, that is, and not artistic conven- 
tions for things. This is a sort of reahsm that is not 
to be confounded with that reahsm in painting of 
which we hear so much. The reahsm in painting is ' 
a thing of purposes ; this, that we have to indicate in 
the drama, is an affair of method. We have heard a 
story, indeed, of a painter in France who, when he 
wanted to paint a sea-beach, carried reahsm from his 
ends to his means, and plastered real sand upon his 
canvas ; and that is precisely what is done in the 
drama. The dramatic author has to paint his beaches 
with real sand : real live men and women move about 
the stage ; we hear real voices ; what is feigned merely 
puts a sense upon what is ; we do actually see a 
woman go behind a screen as Lady Teazle, and, after 
a certain interval, we do actually see her very shame- 
fully produced again. Now all these things, that re- 
main as they were in life, and are not transmuted into 
any artistic convention, are terribly stubborn and diffi- 
cult to deal with ; and hence there are for the drama- 
tist many resultant limitations in time and space. 
These limitations in some sort approximate toward 
those of painting : the dramatic author is tied down, 
not indeed to a moment, but to the duration of each 
scene or act ; he is confined to the stage, almost as 
the painter is confined within his frame. But the 
great restriction is this, that a dramatic author must 
deal with his actors, and with his actors alone. Cer- 
tain moments of suspense, certain significant disposi- 
tions of personages, a certain logical growth of emo- 



VIC TOR HUGO' S R OMANCE S. 3 1 

tion, these are the only means at the disposal of the 
playwright. It is true that, with the assistance of the 
scene-painter, the costumer and the conductor of the 
orchestra, he may add to this something of pageant, 
something of sound and fury ; but these are, for the 
dramatic writer, beside the mark, and do not come 
under the vivifying touch of his genius. When we 
turn to romance, we find this no longer. Here noth- 
ing is reproduced to our senses directly. Not only 
the main conception of the work, but the scenery, the 
appliances, the mechanism by which this conception 
is brought home to us, have been put through the 
crucible of another man's mind, and come out again, 
one and all, in the form of written words. With the 
loss of every degree of such realism as we have de- 
scribed, there is for art a clear gain of liberty and large- 
ness of competence. Thus, painting, in which the 
round outlines of things are thrown on to a fiat board, 
is far more free than sculpture, in which their solidity 
is preserved. It is by giving up these identities that 
art gains true strength. And so in the case of novels 
as compared with the stage. Continuous narration is 
the fiat board on to which the novelist throws every- 
thing. And from this there results for him a great 
loss of vividness, but a great compensating gain in his 
power over the subject ; so that he can now subordi- 
nate one thing to another in importance, and introduce 
all manner of very subtle detail, to a degree that was 
before impossible. He can render just as easily the 
flourish of trumpets before a victorious emperor and 



32 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

the gossip of country market women, the gradual de- 
cay of forty years of a man's life and the gesture of a 
passionate moment. He finds himself equally unable, 
if he looks at it from one point of view — equally able, 
if he looks at it from another point of view— to repro- 
duce a color, a sound, an outline, a logical argument, 
a physical action. He can show his readers, behind 
and around the personages that for the moment oc- 
cupy the foreground of his story, the continual sugges- 
tion of the landscape ; the turn of the weather that will 
turn with it men's lives and fortunes, dimly fore- 
shadowed on the horizon ; the fatality of distant 
events, the stream of national tendency, the salient 
framework of causation. And all this thrown upon 
the flat board — all this entering, naturally and 
smoothly, into the texture of continuous intelligent 
narration. 

This touches the difference between Fielding and 
Scott. In the work of the latter, true to his character 
of a modern and a romantic, we become suddenly con- 
scious of the background. Fielding, on the other 
hand, although he had recognized that the novel was 
nothing else than an epic in prose, wrote in the spirit 
not of the epic, but of the drama. This is not, of 
course, to say that the drama was in any way incapa- 
ble of a regeneration similar in kind to that of which 
I am now speaking with regard to the novel. The 
notorious contrary fact is sufficient to guard the reader 
against such a misconstruction. All that is rneant is, 
that Fielding remained ignorant of certain capabilities 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. ^T, 

vi'hich the novel possesses over the drama ; or, at least, 
neglected and did not develop them. To the end he 
continued to see things as a playwright sees them. 
The world with which he dealt, the world he had 
realized for himself and sought to realize and set before 
his readers, was a world of exclusively human interest. 
As for landscape, he was content to underline stage 
directions, as it might be done in a play-book : Tom 
and INIolly retire into a practicable wood. As for na- 
tionality and public sentiment, it is curious enough to 
think that Tom Jones is laid in the year forty-five, and 
that the only use he makes of the rebellion is to throw 
a troop of soldiers into his hero's way. It is most 
really important, however, to remark the change which 
has been introduced into the conception of character 
by the beginning of the romantic movement and the 
consequent introduction into fiction of a vast amount 
of new material. Fielding tells us as much as he 
thought necessary to account for the actions of his 
creatures ; he thought that each of these actions could 
be decomposed on the spot into a few simple personal 
elements, as we decompose a force in a question of 
abstract dynamics. The larger motives are all un- 
known to him ; he had not understood that the nature 
of the landscape or the spirit of the times could be for 
anything in a story ; and so, naturally and rightly, he 
said nothing about them. But Scott's instinct, the 
instinct of the man of an age profoundly different, 
taught him otherwise ; and, in his work, the individual 
characters begin to occupy a comparatively small pro- 



34 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

portion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre, and 
great hills pile themselves upon each other's shoulders. 
Fielding's characters were always great to the full 
stature of a perfectly arbitrary will. Already in Scott 
we begin to have a sense of the subtle influences that 
moderate and qualify a man's personality ; that per- 
sonality is no longer thrown out in unnatural isolation, 
but is resumed into its place in the constitution of 
things. 

It is this change in the manner of regarding men 
and their actions first exhibited in romance, that has 
since renewed and vivified history. For art precedes 
philosophy and even science. People must have 
noticed things and interested themselves in them be- 
fore they begin to debate upon their causes or influ- 
ence. And it is in this way that art is the pioneer of 
knowledge ; those predilections of the artist he knows 
not why, those irrational acceptations and recognitions, 
reclaim, out of the world that we have not yet realized, 
ever another and another corner ; and after the facts 
have been thus vividly brought before us and have had 
time to settle and arrange themselves in our minds, 
some day there will be found the man of science to 
stand up and give the explanation. Scott took an in- 
terest in many things in which Fielding took none ; 
and for this reason, and no other, he introduced them 
into his romances. If he had been told what would 
be the nature of the movement that he was so lightly 
initiating, he would have been very incredulous and 
not a little scandalized. At the time when he wrote, 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 35 

the real drift of this new manner of pleasing people in 
fiction was not yet apparent ; and, even now, it is only 
by looking at the romances of Victor Hugo that we 
are enabled to form any proper judgment in the mat- 
ter. These books are not only descended by ordinary 
generation from the V/averley novels, but it is in them 
chiefly that we shall find the revolutionary tradition 
of Scott carried farther ; that we shall find Scott him- 
self, in so far as regards his conception of prose fiction 
and its purposes, surpassed in his own spirit, instead 
of tamely followed. We have here, as I said before, 
a line of literary tendency produced, and by this pro- 
duction definitely separated from others. When we 
come to Hugo, we see that the deviation, which seemed 
slight enough and not very serious between Scott and 
Fielding, is indeed such a great gulf in thought and 
sentiment as only successive generations can pass over : 
and it is but natural that one of the chief advances that 
Hugo has made upon Scott is an advance in self- 
consciousness. Both men follow the same road ; but 
where the one went blindly and carelessly, the other 
advances with all deliberation and forethought. There 
never was artist much more unconscious than Scott ; 
and there have been not many more conscious than 
Hugo. The passage at the head of these pages shows 
how organically he had understood the nature of his 
own changes. He has, underlying each of the five 
great romances (which alone I purpose here to ex- 
amine), two deliberate designs : one artistic, the other 
consciously ethical and intellectual. This is a man 



36 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

living in a different world from Scott, who professes 
sturdily (in one of his introductions) that he does not 
believe in novels having any moral influence at all ; 
but still Hugo is too much of an artist to let himself 
be hampered by his dogmas ; and the truth is that the 
artistic result seems, in at least one great instance, to 
have very little connection with the other, or directly 
ethical result. 

The artistic result of a romance, what is left upon 
the memory by any really powerful and artistic novel, 
is something so complicated and refined that it is diffi- 
cult to put a name upon it ; and yet something as 
simple as nature. These two propositions may seem 
mutually destructive, but they are so only in appear- 
ance. The fact is that art is working far ahead of 
language as well as of science, realizing for us, by all 
manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for 
which as yet we have no direct name ; nay, for which 
we may never perhaps have a direct name, for the 
reason that these effects do not enter very largely into 
the necessities of life. Hence alone is that suspicion 
of vagueness that often hangs about the purpose of a 
romance : it is clear enough to us in thought ; but 
we are not used to consider anything clear until vi^e are 
able to formulate it in words, and analytical language 
has not been sufficiently shaped to that end. We all 
know this difficulty in the case of a picture, simple 
and strong as may be the impression that it has left 
with us ; and it is only because language is the medium 
of romance, that we are prevented from seeing that 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 37 

the two cases are the same. It is not that there is 
anything blurred or indefinite in the impression left 
with us, it is just because the impression is so very 
definite after its own kind, that we find it hard to fit 
it exactly with the expressions of our philosophical 
speech. 

It is this idea which underlies and issues from a 
romance, this something which it is the function of 
that form of art to create, this epical value, that I pro- 
pose chiefly to seek and, as far as may be, to throw 
into relief, in the present study. It is thus, I believe, 
that we shall see most clearly the great stride that 
Hugo has taken beyond his predecessors, and how, no 
longer content with expressing more or less abstract 
relations of man to man, he has set before himself the 
task of realizing, in the language of romance, much 
of the involution of our complicated lives. 

This epical value is -not to be found, let it be un- 
derstood, in every so-called novel. The great major- 
ity are networks of art in anything but a very second- 
ary signification. One might almost number on one's 
fingers the works in which such a supreme artistic in- 
tention has been in any way superior to the other and 
lesser aims, themselves more or less artistic, that gen- 
erally go hand in hand with it in the conception of 
prose romance. The purely critical spirit is, in most 
novels, paramount. At the present moment we can 
recall one man only, for whose works' it would have 
been equally possible to accom^^^li our present de- 
sign : and that man is Hawthorne. There is a unity, 



38 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

an unwavering creative purpose, about some at leasi 
of Hawthorne's romances, that impresses itself on the 
most indifferent reader ; and the very restrictions and 
weaknesses of the man served perhaps to strengthen 
the vivid and single impression of his works. There 
is nothing of this kind in Hugo : unity, if he attains 
to it, is indeed unity out of multitude ; and it is the 
wonderful power of subordination and synthesis thus 
displayed, that gives us the measure of his talent. No 
amount of mere discussion and statement, such as 
this, could give a just conception of the greatness of 
this power. It must be felt in the books themselves, 
and all that can be done in the present essay is to re- 
call to the reader the more general features of each of 
the five great romances, hurriedly and imperfectly, as 
space will permit, and rather as a suggestion than any- 
thing more complete. 

The moral end that the author had before him in 
the conception of Notre Dame de Paris was (he tells 
us) to ' ' denounce ' ' the external fatality that hangs 
over men in the form of foolish and inflexible super- 
stition. To speak plainly, this moral purpose seems 
to have mighty little to do with the artistic concep- 
tion ; moreover it is very questionably handled, while 
the artistic conception is developed with the most con- 
summate success. Old Paris lives for us with new- 
ness of life : we have ever before our eyes the city cut 
into three by the two arms of the river, the boat^shaped 
island " moored "" by five bridges to the different 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 39 

shores, and the two unequal towns on either hand. 
We forget all that enumeration of palaces and churches 
and convents which occupies so many pages of admir- 
able description, and the thoughtless reader might be 
inclined to conclude from this, that they were pages 
thrown away ; but this is not so : we forget, indeed, 
the details, as we forget or do not see the different 
layers of paint on a completed picture ; but the thing 
desired has been accomplished, and we carry away with 
us a sense of the " Gothic profile" of the city, of the 
" surprising forest of pinnacles and towers and bel- 
fries," and we know not what of rich and intricate and 
quaint. And throughout, Notre Dame has been held 
up over Paris by a height far greater than that of its 
twin towers : the Cathedral is present to us from the 
first page to the last ; the title has given us the clew, 
and already in the Palace of Justice the story begins 
to attach itself to that central building by character 
after character. It is purely an effect of mirage ; 
Notre Dame does not, in reality, thus dominate and 
stand out above the city ; and any one who should 
visit it, in the spirit of the Scott-tourists to Edinburgh 
or the Trossachs, would be almost offended at finding 
nothing more than this old church thrust away into a 
corner. It is purely an effect of mirage, as we say ; 
but it is an effect that permeates and possesses the 
whole book with astonishing consistency and strength. 
And then, Hugo has peopled this Gothic city, and, 
above all, this Gothic church, with a race of men even 
more distinctly Gothic than their surroundings. We 



40 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

know this generation already : we have seen them 
clustered about the worn capitals of pillars, or craning 
forth over the church-leads with the open mouths of 
gargoyles. About them all there is that sort of stiff 
quaint unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, 
and even of a certain bourgeois snugness, with passion- 
ate contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of 
Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception ; 
she and the goat traverse the story like two children 
who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment 
of the book is when these two share with the two other 
leading characters, Dom Claude and Quasimodo, the 
chill shelter of the old cathedral. It is here that we 
touch most intimately the generative artistic idea of the 
romance : are they not all four taken out of some 
quaint moulding, illustrative of the Beatitudes, or the 
Ten Commandments, or the seven deadly sins .? 
What is Quasimodo but an animated gargoyle .? 
What is the whole book but the reanimation of Gothic 
art.? 

It is curious that in this, the earliest of the five great 
romances, there should be so little of that extrava- 
gance that latterly we have come almost to identify 
with the author's manner. Yet even here we are dis- 
tressed by words, thoughts, and incidents that defy 
belief and alienate the sympathies. The scene of the 
in pace, for example, in spite of its strength, verges 
d-ingerously on the province of the penny novelist. I 
do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell ; I 
should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 41 

And again the followingttwo sentences, out of an other- 
wise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it has ever 
entered into the heart of any other man to imagine 
(vol. ii. p. 180) : *' II souffrait tant que par instants 
il s'arrachait des poignees de c\\Qwt\iyi, pour voir s ils 
ne blanchtssaient pas." And, p. 181 : " Ses pensees 
etaient si insupportables qu'il prenait sa tete a deux 
mains et tachait de I'arracher de ses epaules pour la 
hriser sur le pave. ' ' 

One other fault, before we pass on. In spice of the 
horror and misery that pervade all of his later work, 
there is in it much less of actual melodrama than here, 
and rarely, I should say never, that sort of brutality, 
that useless insufferable violence to the feelings, which 
is the last distinction between melodrama and true 
tragedy. Now, in Notre Dame, the whole story of 
Esmeralda's passion for the worthless archer is un- 
pleasant enough ; but when she betrays herself in her 
last hiding-place, herself and her wretched mother, 
by calling out to this sordid hero who has long since 
forgotten her— well, that is just one of those things 
that readers will not forgive ; they do not like it, and 
they are quite right ; life is hard enough for poor mor- 
tals, without having it indefinitely embittered for them 
by bad art. 

We look in vain for any similar blemish in Les 
Miserahles. Here, on the other hand, there is perhaps 
the nearest approach to literary restraint that Hugo 
has ever made : there is here certainly the ripest and 



42 VICTOR HUGO'b ROMANCES. 

most easy development of his powers. It is the moral 
intention of this great novel to awaken us a little, if it 
may be — for such awakenings are unpleasant — to the 
great cost of this society that we enjoy and profit by, 
to the labor and sweat of those who support the litter, 
civilization, in which we ourselves are so smoothly car- 
ried forward. People are all glad to shut their eyes ; 
and it gives them a very simple pleasure when they 
can forget that our laws commit a million individual 
injustices, to be once roughly Justin the general ; that 
the bread that we eat, and the quiet of the family, and 
all that embellishes life and makes it worth having, 
have to be purchased by death — by the deaths of ani- 
mals, and the deaths of men wearied out with labor, 
and the deaths of those criminals called tyrants and 
revolutionaries, and the deaths of those revolutionaries 
called criminals. It is to something of all this that 
Victor Hugo wishes to open men's eyes in Les Miser a- 
bles ; and this moral lesson is worked out in masterly 
coincidence with the artistic effect. The deadly 
weight of civilization to those who are below presses 
sensibly on our shoulders as we read. A sort of 
mocking indignation grows upon us as we find Society 
rejecting, again and again, the services of the most ser- 
viceable ; setting Jean Valjean to pick oakum, casting 
Galileo into prison, even crucifying Christ. There is 
a haunting and horrible sense of insecurity about the 
book. The terror we thus feel is a terror for the ma- 
chinery of law, that we can hear tearing, in the dark, 
good and bad between its formidable wheels with the 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 43 

iron stolidity of all machinery, human or divine. 
This terror incarnates itself sometimes and leaps hor- 
ribly out upon us ; as when the crouching mendicant 
looks up, and Jean Valjean, in the light of the street 
lamp, recognizes the face of the detective ; as when 
the lantern of the patrol flashes suddenly through the 
darkness of the sewer ; or as when the fugitive comes 
forth at last at evening, by the quiet riverside, and 
finds the police there also, waiting stolidly for vice and 
stolidly satisfied to take virtue instead. The whole 
book is full of oppression, and full of prejudice, which 
is the great cause of oppression. We have the preju- 
dices of M. Gillenormand, the prejudices of Marius, 
the prejudices in revolt that defend the barricade, and 
the throned prejudices that carry it by storm. And 
then we have the admirable but ill-written character of 
Javert, the man who had made a religion of the police, 
and would not survive the moment when he learned 
that there was another truth outside the truth of laws ; 
a just creation, over which the reader will do well to 
ponder. 

With so gloomy a design this great work is still full 
of life and light and love. The portrait of the good 
Bishop is one of the most agreeable things in modern 
literature. The whole scene at Montfermeil is full of 
the charm that Hugo knows so well how to throw 
about children. Who can forget the passage wheie 
Cosette, sent out at night to draw water, stands in ad- 
miration before the illuminated booth, and the huck- 
ster behind '* lui faisait un peu Teffet d'etre ie Pere 



44 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

eternel ?" The pathos of the forlorn sabot laid trust- 
ingly by the chimney in expectation of the Santa Claus 
that was not, takes us fairly by the throat ; there is 
nothing in Shakespeare that touches the heart more 
nearly. The loves of Cosetteand Mariusare very pure 
and pleasant, and we cannot refuse our affection to 
Gavroche, although we may make a mental reserva- 
tion of our profound disbelief in his existence. Take 
it for all in all, there are few books in the world that 
can be compared with it. There is as much calm and 
serenity as Hugo has ever attained to ; the melo- 
dramatic coarsenesses that disfigured Notre Dame are no 
longer present. There is certainly much that is pain- 
fully improbable ; and again, the story itself is a little 
too well constructed ; it produces on us the effect of a 
puzzle, and we grow incredulous as we find that every 
character fits again and again into th'j plot, and is, like 
the child's cube, serviceable on six faces ; things are 
not so well arranged in life as all that comes to. 
Some of the digressions, also, seem out of place, and 
do nothing but interrupt and irritate. But when all 
is said, the book remains of masterly conception and 
of masterly development, full of pathos, full of truth, 
full of a high eloquence. 

Superstition and social exigency having been thus 
dealt v/ith in the first two members of the series, it re- 
mained for Les Travailleurs de la Mcr to show man 
hand to hand with the elements, the Inst form of ex- 
ternal force th?.t is brouc^ht acrainst him. And here 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 45 

onc3 more the artistic effect and the moral lesson are 
worked out together, and are, indeed, one. Gilliat, 
alone upon the reef at his herculean task, offers a 
type of human industry in the midst of the vague 
" diffusion of forces into the illimitable," and the vis- 
ionary development of '* wasted labor" in the sea, 
and the winds, and the clouds. No character was 
ever thrown into such strange relief as Gilliat. The 
great circle of sea-birds that come wonderingly around 
him on the night of his arrival, strikes at once the note 
of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills the whole 
reef with his indefatigable toil ; this solitary spot in the 
ocean rings with the clamor of his anvil ; we see him 
as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the 
clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is 
not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson 
Crusoe, for example ; indeed, no two books could be 
more instructive to set side by side than Les Travail- 
leurs and this other of "the old days before art had 
learned to occupy itself with what lies outside of human 
will. Crusoe was one sole centre of interest in the 
midst of a nature utterly dead and utterly unrealized 
by the artist ; but this is not how we feel with Gilliat ; 
we feel that he is opposed by a "dark coalition of 
forces," that an "immense animosity" surrounds 
him ; we are the witnesses of the terrible warfare that 
he wages with " the silent inclemency of phenomena 
gomg their own way, and the great general law, im- 
placable and passive :" "a conspiracy of the indiffer- 
ency of things' ' is against him. There is not one in 



46 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

terest on the reef, but two. Just as we recognize 
Gilliat for the hero, we recognize, as implied by this 
indifferency of things, this direction of forces to some 
purpose outside our purposes, yet another character 
who may almost take rank as the villain of the novel, 
and the two face up to one another blow for blow, 
feint for feint, until, in the storm, they fight itepically 
out, and Gilliat remains the victor ; — a victor, how- 
ever, who has still to encounter the octopus. I need 
say nothing of the grewsome, repulsive excellence of 
that famous scene ; it will be enough to remind the 
reader that Gilliat is in pursuit of a crab when he is 
himself assaulted by the devil fish, and that this, in 
its way, is the last touch to the inner significance of 
the book ; here, indeed, is the true position of man 
in the universe. 

But in Les Travailleurs, with all its strength, with 
all its eloquence, with all the beauty and fitness of its 
main situations, we cannot conceal from ourselves that 
there is a thread of something that will not bear calm 
scrutiny. There is much that is disquieting about the 
storm, admirably as it begins. I am very doubtful 
whether it would be possible to keep the boat from 
foundering in such circumstances, by any amount of 
breakwater and broken rock. I do not understand 
the way in which the waves are spoken of, and prefer 
just to take it as a loose way of speaking, and pass on. 
And lastly, how does it happen that the sea was quite 
calm next day ? Is this great hurricane a piece of 
scene-painting after all ? And when we have forgiven 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 47 

Gilliat's prodigies of strength (although, in soberness, 
he reminds us more of Porthos in the Vicomte de 
Bragelonne than is quite desirable), what is to be said 
to his suicide, and how are we to condemn in ade- 
quate terms that unprincipled avidity after effect, which 
tells us that the sloop disappeared over the horizon, 
and the head under the water, at one and the same 
moment ? Monsieur Hugo may say what he will, but 
we know better ; we know very well that they did not ; 
a thing like that raises up a despairing spirit of oppo- 
sition in a man's readers ; they give him the lie fierce- 
ly, as they read. Lastly, we have here already some 
beginning of that curious series of English blunders, 
that makes us wonder if there are neither proof sheets 
nor judicious friends in the whole of France, and affects 
us sometimes with a sickening uneasiness as to what 
may be our own exploits when we touch upon foreign 
countries and foreign tongues. It is here that we 
shall find the famous ' ' first of the fourth, ' ' and many 
English words that may be comprehensible perhaps in 
Paris. It is here that we learn that *' laird " in Scot- 
land is the same title as " lord " in England. Here, 
also, is an account of a Highland soldier's equipment, 
which we recommend to the lovers of genuine fun. 

In L' Homme qui Rit, it was Hugo's object to " de- 
nounce" (as he would say himself) the aristocratic 
principle as it was exhibited in England ; and this 
purpose, somewhat more unmitigatedly satiric than 
that of the two last, must answer for much that is un- 



48 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

pleasant in the book. The repulsiveness of the scheme 
of the story, and the manner in which it is bound up 
with impossibihties and absurdities, discourage the 
reader at the outset, and it needs an effort to lake it 
as seriously as it deserves. And yet when we judge it 
dehberately, it will be seen that, here again, the story 
is admirably adapted to the moral. The constructive 
ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. 
Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a reductio 
ad ahsurduvi of the aristocratic principle, than the ad- 
ventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, 
snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and in- 
stalled without preparation as one of the hereditary leg- 
islators of a great country. It is with a very bitter 
irony that the paper, on which all this; depends, is left 
to float for years at the will of wind and tide. What^ 
again, can be finer in conception than that voice from 
the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords, in 
solemn arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of 
its splendid occupants } The horrible laughter, stamped 
forever " by order of the king" upon the face of this 
strange spokesman of democracy, adds yet another 
feature of justice to the scene ; in all time, travesty- 
lias been the argument of oppression ; and, in all time, 
the oppressed might have made this answer : *' If I 
am vile, is it not your system that has made me so .?" 
This ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the 
one strain of tenderness running through the web of 
this unpleasant story : the love of the blind girl Dea 
for the monster. It is a most benignant providence 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 49 

that thus harmoniously brings together these two mis- 
fortunes ; it is one of those compensations, one of 
those afterthoughts of a relenting destiny, that recon- 
cile us from time to time to the evil that is in 
the world ; the atmosphere of the book is purified 
by the presence of this pathetic love ; it seems to 
be above the story somehow, and not of it, as the 
full moon over the night of some foul and feverish 
city. 

There is here a quality in the narration more inti- 
mate and particular than is general with Hugo ; but 
it must be owned, on the other hand, that the book 
is wordy, and even, now and then, a little wearisome. 
Ursus and his wolf are pleasant enough companions ; 
but the former is nearly as much an abstract type as 
the latter. There is a beginning, also, of an abuse of 
conventional conversation, such as may be quite par- 
donable in the drama where needs must, but is with- 
out excuse in the romance. Lastly, I suppose one 
must say a word or two about the weak points of this 
not immaculate novel ; and if so, it will be best to 
distinguish at once. The large family of English 
blunders, to which we have alluded already in speak- 
ing of Les Travailleurs, are of a sort that is really in- 
different in art. If Shakespeare makes his ships cast 
anchor by some seaport of Bohemia, if Hugo imagines 
Tom-Tim-Jack to be a likely nickname for an English 
sailor, or if either Shakespeare, or Hugo, or Scott, 
for that matter, be guilty of " figments enough to con- 
fuse the march of a whole history — anachronisms 



50 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

enough to overset all chronology," ^ the life of their 
creations, the artistic truth and accuracy of their work, 
is not so much as compromised. But when we come 
upon a passage like the sinking of the " Ourque" in 
this romance, we can do nothing but cover our face 
with our hands : the conscientious reader feels a sort 
of disgrace in the very reading. For such artistic false- 
hoods, springing from what I have called already an 
unprincipled avidity after effect, no amount of blame 
can be exaggerated ; and above all, when the criminal 
is such a man as Victor Hugo. We cannot forgive in 
him what we might have passed over in a third-rate 
sensation novelist. Little as he seems to know of the 
sea and nautical affairs, he must have known very 
well that vessels do not go down as he makes the 
" Ourque" go down ; he must have known that such 
a liberty with fact was against the laws of the game, 
and incompatible with all appearance of sincerity in 
conception or workmanship. 

In each of these books, one after another, there has 
been some departure from the traditional canons of 
romance ; but takmg each separately, one would have 
feared to make too much of these departures, or to 
found any theory upon what was perhaps purely acci- 
dental. The appearance of Quatre Vingt Treize has 
put us out of the region of such doubt. Like a doc- 
tor who has long been hesitating how to classify an 

^ Prefatory letter to Peverzl of the Peak- 



VICTOR HUGO' S ROMANCES. 51 

epidemic malady, we have come at last upon a case so 
well marked that our uncertainty is at an end. It is 
a novel built upon ** a sort of enigma," which was at 
that date laid beiore revolutionary France, and which 
is presented by Hugo to Tellmarch, to Lantenac, to 
Gauvain, and very terribly to Cimourdain, each of 
whom gives his own solution of the question, clement 
or stern, according to the temper of his spirit. That 
enigma was this : ' * Can a good action be a bad ac- 
tion ? Does not he who spares the wolf kill the 
sheep ?" This question, as I say, meets with one an- 
swer after another during the course of the book, and 
yet seems to remain undecided to the end. And 
something in the same way, although one character, 
or one set of characters, after another comes to the 
front and occupies our attention for the moment, we 
never identify our interest with any of these temporary 
heroes nor regret them after they are withdrawn. We 
soon come to regard them somewhat as special cases 
of a general law ; what we really care for is something 
that they only imply and body forth to us. We know 
how history continues through century after century ; 
how this king or that patriot disappears from its pages 
with his whole generation, and yet we do not cease to 
read, nor do we even feel as if we had reached any 
legitimate conclusion, because our interest is not in 
the men, but in the country that they loved or hated, 
benefited or injured. And so it is here : Gauvain and 
Cimourdain pass away, and we regard them no more 
than the lost armies of which we find the cold statistics 



$2 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

in military annals ; what we regard is what remains 
behind ; it is the principle that put these men where 
they were, that filled them for a while with heroic in- 
spiration, and has the power, now that they are fallen, 
to inspire others with the same courage. The interest 
of the novel centres about revolutionary France : just 
as the plot is an abstract judicial difficulty, the hero is 
an abstract historical force. And this has been done, 
not, as it would have been before, by the cold and 
cumbersome machinery of allegory, but with bold, 
straightforward realism, dealing only with the objective 
materials of art, and dealrng with them so master- 
fully that the palest abstractions of thought come 
before us, and move our hopes and fears, as if 
they were the young men and maidens of customary 
romance. 

The episode of the mother and children in Quatre 
Vingt Treize is equal to anything that Hugo has ever 
written. There is one chapter in the second volume, 
for instance, called " Sein gucri, cceur saignant,'" that 
is fall of the very stuff of true tragedy, and nothing 
could be more delightful than the humors of the three 
children on the day before the assault. The passage 
on La Vendee is really great, and the scenes in Paris 
have much of the same broad merit. The book is 
full, as usual, of pregnant and splendid sayings. But 
when thus much is conceded by way of praise, we 
come to the other scale of the balance, and find this, 
also, somewhat heavy. There is here a yet greater 
over employment of conventional dialogue than in 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 53 

L Homme qui Rit ; and much that should have been 
said by the author himself, if it were to be said at all, 
he has most unwarrantably put into the mouths of one 
or other of his characters. We should hke to know 
what becomes of the main body of the troop in the 
wood of La Saudraie during tiie thirty pages or so in 
which the foreguard lays aside all discipline, and stops 
to gossip over a woman and some children. We have 
an unpleasant idea forced upon us at one place, in 
spite of all the good-natured incredulity that we can 
summon up to resist it. Is it possible that Monsieur 
Hugo thinks they ceased to steer the corvette while the 
gun was loose .^ Of the chapter in which Lantenac 
and Halmalho are alone together in the boat, the less 
said the better ; of course, if there were nothing else, 
they would have been swamped thirty times over dur- 
ing the course of Lantenac' s harangue. Again, after 
Lantenac has landed, we have scenes of almost inim- 
itable workmanship that suggest the epithet " statu- 
esque" by their clear and trenchant outline ; but the 
tocsin scene will not do, and the tocsin unfortunately 
pervades the whole passage, ringing continually in 
our ears with a taunting accusation of falsehood. And 
then, when we come to the place where Lantenac 
meets the royalists, under the idea that he is going to 
meet the republicans, it seems as if there were a hitch 
in the stage mechanism. I have tried it over in every 
way, and I cannot conceive any disposition that would 
make the scene possible as narrated. 



54 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

Such then, with their faults and their signai excel- 
lences, are the five great novels. 

Romance is a language in which many persons 
learn to speak with a certain appearance of fluency ; 
but there are few who can ever bend it to any practi- 
cal need, few who can ever be said to express them- 
selves in it. It has become abundantly plain in the 
foregoing examination that Victor Hugo occupies a 
high place among those few. He has always a perfect 
command over his stories ; and we see that they are 
constructed with a high regard to some ulterior pur- 
pose, and that every situation is informed with moral 
significance and grandeur. Of no other man can the 
same thing be said in the same degree. His romances 
are not to be confused with " the novel with a pur- 
pose" as familiar to the English reader : this is gen- 
erally the model of incompetence ; and we see the 
moral clumsily forced into every hole and corner of 
the story, or thrown externally over it like a carpet 
over a railing. Now the moral significance, with 
Hugo, is of the essence of the romance ; it is the or- 
ganizing principle. If you could somehow despoil 
Les Miserahles or Lcs Travailleurs of their distinctive 
lesson, you would find that the story had lost its in- 
terest and the book was dead. 

Having thus learned to subordinate his story to an 
idea, to make his art speak, he went on to teach it to 
say things heretofore unaccustomed. If you look back 
at the five books of which we have now so hastily 
spoken, you will be astonished at the fieedom with 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 55 

which the original purposes of story-telUng have been 
laid aside and passed by. Where are now the two 
lovers who descended the main watershed of all the 
Waverley novels, and all the novels that have tried to 
follow in their wake ? Sometimes they are almost 
lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man 
against the sea and sky, as in Les Travailleurs ; some- 
times, as in Les Miser ables, they merely figure for 
awhile, as a beautiful episode in the epic of oppression ; 
sometimes they are entirely absent, as in Quatre Vingt 
Treize. There is no hero in Noire Dame : in Les 
Miserabies it is an old man : in L' Homme qui Ritii 
is a monster : in Quaire Vifigi Treize it is the Revo- 
lution. Those elements that only began to show 
themselves timidly, as adjuncts, in the novels of Wal- 
ter Scott, have usurped ever more and more of the 
canvas ; until we find the whole interest of one of 
Hugo's romances centriiig around matter that Field- 
ing would have banished from his altogether, as being 
out of the field of fiction. So we have elemental 
forces occupying nearly as large a place, playing (so 
to speak) nearly as important a role, as the man, Gil- 
liat, who opposes and overcomes them. So we find 
the fortuiies of a nation put upon the stage with as 
much vividness as ever before the fortunes of a village 
maiden or a lost heir ; and the forces that oppose and 
corrupt a principle holding the attention quite as 
strongly as the wicked barons or dishonest attorneys 
of the past. Hence those individual interests that 
w^re supreme in Fielding, and even in Scott, stood 



56 VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 

out over everything else and formed as it were the 
spine of the story, figure here only as one set of in- 
terests among many sets, one force among many 
forces, one thing to be treated out of a whole world of 
things equally vivid and important. So that, for 
Hugo, man is no longer an isolated spirit without an- 
tecedent or relation here below, but a being irivolved 
in the action and reaction of natural forces, himself a 
centre of such action and reaction ; or an unit in a 
great multitude, chased hither and thither by epi- 
demic terrors and aspirations, and, in all seriousness, 
blown about by every wind of doctrine. This is a 
long way that we have travelled : between such work 
and the work of Fielding is there not, indeed, a great 
gulf in thought and sentiment .? 

Art, thus conceived, realizes for men a larger por» 
tion of life, and that portion one that it is more diffi- 
cult for them to realize unaided ; and, besides help- 
ing them to feel more intensely those restricted 
personal interests which are patent to all, it awakes in 
them some consciousness of those more general rela- 
tions that are so strangely invisible to the average man 
in ordinary moods. It helps to keep man in his place 
m nature, and, above all, it helps him to understand 
more intelligently the responsibilities of his place in 
society. And in all this generalization of interest, we 
never miss those small humanities that are at the op- 
posite pole of excellence in ait ; and while we admire 
the intellect that could see life thus largely, we are 
touched with another sentiment for the tender heart 



VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES. 57 

that slipped the piece of gold into Cosette's sabot, that 
was virginally troubled at the fluttering of her dress in 
the spring wind, or put the blind girl beside the de- 
formity of the laughing man. This, then, is the last 
praise that we can award to these romances. The 
author has shown a power of just subordination hith- 
erto unequalled ; and as, in reaching forward to one 
class of effects, he has not been forgetful or careless of 
the other, his work is more nearly complete work, and 
his art, wiih all its imperfections, deals more compre- 
hensively with the materials of life than that of any of 
his otherwise more sure and masterly predecessors. 

These five books would have made a very great fame 
for any writer, and yet they are but one fa9ade of the 
monument that Victor Hugo has erected to his genius. 
Everywhere we find somewhat the same greatness, 
somewhat the same infirmities. In his poems and 
plays there are the same unaccountable prctervities 
that have already astonished us in the romances. 
There, too, is the same feverish strength, welding the 
fiery iron of his idea under forge-hammer repetitions 
— an emphasis that is somehow akin to weakness — a 
strength that is a little epileptic. He stands so far 
above all his contemporaries, and so incomparably 
excels them in richness, breadth, variety, and moral 
earnestness, that we almost feel as if he had a sort of 
right to fall oftener and more heavily than others ; but 
this does not reconcile us to seeing him profit by the 
privilege so freely. We like to have, in our great 
men, something that is above question ; we like to 



58 VICTOR HUGO' S ROMANCES. 

place an implicit faith in them, and see them always 
on the platform of their greatness ; and this, unhap- 
pily, cannot be with Hugo. As Heine said long ago, 
his is a genius somewhat deformed ; but, deformed as 
it is, we accept it gladly ; we shall have the wisdom to 
see where his foot slips, but we shall have the justice 
also to recognize in him one of the greatest artists of 
our generation, and, in many ways, one of the great- 
est artists of time. If we look back, yet once, upon 
these five romances, we see blemishes such as we can 
lay to the charge of no other man in the number of 
the famous ; but to what other man can we attribute 
such sweeping innovations, such a new and signifi- 
cant presentment of the life of man, such an amount, 
if we merely think of the amount, of equally consum- 
mate performance ? 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

To write with authority about another man, we 
must have fellow-feeHng and some common ground of 
experience with our subject. We may praise or blame 
accordmg as we find him related to us by the best or 
worst in ourselves ; but it is only in virtue of some re- 
lationship that we can be his judges, even to condemn. 
Feelings which we share and understand enter for us 
into the tissue of the man's character ; those to which 
we are strangers in our own experience we are inclined 
to regard as blots, exceptions, inconsistencies, and ex- 
cursions of the diabolic ; we conceive them with re- 
pugnance, explain them with difficulty, and raise our 
hands to heaven in wonder when we find them in con- 
junction with talents that we respect or virtues that we 
admire. David, king of Israel, would pass a sounder 
judgment on a man than either Nathaniel or David 
Hume. Now, Principal Shairp's recent volume, al- 
though I believe no one will read it without respect 
and interest, has this one capital defect — that there is 
imperfect sympathy between the author and the sub- 
ject, between the critic and the personality under criti- 
cism. Hence an inorganic, if not an incoherent, pres- 
entation of both the poems and the man. Of Holy 
Willie s Prayer^ Principal Shairp remarks that " those 



6 o SOME A SPE C TS OF R OBER T B URNS. 

who have loved most what was best in Burns's poetry 
must have regretted that it was ever written." To 
i\iQ Jolly Beggars, so far as my memory serves me, he 
refers but once ; and then only to remark on the 
" strange, not to say painful," circumstance that the 
same hand which wrote the Cotter s Saturday Night 
should have stooped to write \\\q Jolly Beggars. The 
Saturday Night may or may not be an admirable 
poem ; but its significance is trebled, and the power 
and range of the poet first appears, when it is set be- 
side XhQ Jolly Beggars. To take a man's work piece- 
meal, except with the design of elegant extracts, is the 
way to avoid, and not to perform, the critic's duty. 
The same defect is displayed in the treatment of Burns 
as a man, which is broken, apologetical, and confused. 
The man here presented to us is not that Burns, 
teres atque rotundus — a burly figure in literature, as, 
from our present vantage of time, we have begun to 
see him. This, on the other hand, is Burns as he 
may have appeared to a contemporary clergyman, 
whom we shall conceive to have been a kind and in- 
dulgent but orderly and orthodox person, anxious to 
be pleased, but too often hurt and disappointed by the 
behavior of his red-hot /ro//^/, and solacing himself 
with the explanation that the poet was " the most in- 
consistent of men.' ' If you are so sensibly pained by 
the misconduct of your subject, and so paternally de- 
lighted with his virtues, you will always be an excel- 
lent gentleman, but a somewhat questionable biog- 
rapher. Indeed, we can only be sorry and surprised 



SOME A SPECTS OF ROBER T B URNS. 6 1 

that Principal Shairp should have chosen a theme so 
uncongenial. When we find a man writing on Burns, 
who likes neither Holy Willie, nor the Beggars, nor 
the Ordinalion, nothing is adequate to the situation but 
the old cry of Geronte : " Que diable allait-il faire 
dans cette galere?" And every merit we fmd in the 
book, which is sober and candid in a degree unusual 
with biographies of Burns, only leads us to regret more 
heartily that good work should be so greatly thrown 
away. 

It is far from my intention to tell over aga:in a story 
that has been so often told ; but there are certainly 
some points in the character of Burns that will bear to 
be brought out, and some chapters in his life that de- 
mand a brief rehearsal. The unity of the man's na- 
ture, for all its richness, has fallen somewhat out of 
sight in the pressure of new information and the 
apologetical ceremony of biographers. Mr. Carlyle 
made an inimitable bust -of the poet's head of gold ; 
may I not be forgiven if my business should have more 
to do with the feet, which were of clay ? 

Youth. 

Any view of Burns would be misleading which passed 
over in silence the influences of his home and his 
father. That father, William Burnes, after having been 
for many years a gardener, took a farm, married, and, 
like an emigrant in a new country, built himself a 
house with his own hands. Poverty of the most dis- 
tressing sort, with sometimes the near prospect of a 



62 SOME A SPE CTS OF ROBER T B URNS. 

jail, embittered the remainder of his hfe. Chill, back- 
ward, and austere with strangers, grave and imperious 
in his family, he was yet a man of very unusual parts 
and of an affectionate nature. On his way through 
life he had remarked much upon other men, with 
more result in theory than practice ; and he had re- 
flected upon many subjects as he delved the garden. 
His great delight was in solid conversation ; he would 
leave his work to talk with the schoolmaster Mur- 
doch ; and Robert, when he came home late at night, 
not only turned aside rebuke but kept his father two 
hours beside the fire by the charm of his merry and 
vigorous talk. Nothing is more characteristic of the 
class in general, and William Burnes in particular, than 
the pains he took to get proper schooling for his boys, 
and, when that was no longer possible, the sense and 
resolution with which he set himself to supply the de- 
ficiency by his own influence. For many years he was 
their chief companion ; he spoke with them seriously 
on all subjects as if they had been grown men ; at 
night, when work was over, he taught them arithmetic ; 
he borrowed books for them on history, science, and 
theology ; and he felt it his duty to supplement this 
last— the trait is laughably Scottish — by a dialogue of 
his own composition, where his own private shade of 
orthodoxy was exactly represented. He would go to 
his daughter as she stayed afield herding cattle, to teach 
her the names of grasses and wild flowers, or to sit by 
her side when it thundered. Distance to strangers, 
deep family tenderness, love of knowledge, a narrow. 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 63 

precise, and formal reading of theology — everything 
we learn of him hangs well together, and builds up a 
popular Scotch type. If I mention the name of An- 
drew Fairservice, it is only as I might couple for an 
instant Dugald Dalgetty with old Marshal Loudon, to 
help out the reader's comprehension by a popular but 
unworthy instance of a class. Such was the influence 
of this good and wise man that his household became 
a school to itself, and neighbors who came into the 
farm at meal-time would find the whole family, father, 
brothers, and sisters, helping themselves with one 
hand, and holding a book in the other. We are sur- 
prised at the prose style of Robert ; that of Gilbert 
need surprise us no less ; even William writes a re- 
markable letter for a young man of such slender op- 
portunities. One anecdote marks the taste of the 
family. Murdoch brought Titus Andronictis, and, 
with such dominie elocution as we may suppose, be- 
gan to read it aloud before this rustic audience ; but 
when he had reached the passage where Tamora in- 
sults Lavinia, with one voice and "in an agony of 
distress" they refused to hear it to an end. In such 
a father and with such a home, Robert had already 
the making of an excellent education ; and what Mur- 
doch added, although it may not have been much in 
amount, was in character the very essence of a liteiary 
training. Schools and colleges, for one great man 
whom they complete, perhaps unmake a dozen ; the 
strong spirit can do well upon more scanty fare. 
Robert step^ before us, almost from the first, in his 



64 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURA'S. 

complete character — a proud, headstrong, impetuous 
lad, greedy of pleasure, greedy o£ notice ; in his own 
phrase " panting after distinction, " and in his brother's 
*' cherishing a particular jealousy of people who were 
richer or of more consequence than himself :" with 
all this, he was emphatically of the artist nature. Al- 
ready he made a conspicuous figure in Tarbolton 
church, with the only tied hair in the parish, "and 
his plaid, which was of a particular color, wrapped iri 
a particular manner round his shoulders/' Ten years 
later, when a married man, the father of a family, a 
farmer, and an officer of Excise, we shall find him out 
fishing in masquerade, with fox-skin cap, belted great- 
coat, and great Highland broadsword. He liked 
dressing up, in fact, for its own sake. This is the 
spirit which leads to the extravagant array of Latin 
Quarter students, and the proverbial velveteen of the 
English landscape-painter ; and, though the pleasure 
derived is in itself merely personal, it shows a man 
who is, to say the least of it, not pained by general at- 
tention and remark. His father wrote the family 
name Burnes ; Robert early adopted the orthography 
Burness from his cousin in the Mearns ; and in his 
twenty-eighth year changed it once more to Burns. 
It is plain that the last transformation was not made 
without some qualm ; for in addressing his cousin he 
adheres, in at least one more letter, to spelling num- 
ber two. And this, again, shows a man preoccupied 
about the manner of his appearance even down to the 
name, and little willing to follow custom. Again, he 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURiVS. 65 

was proud, and justly proud, of his powers in conver- 
sation. To no other man's have we the same conclu- 
sive testimony from different sources and from every 
rank of life. It is almost a commonplace that the best 
of his works was what he said in talk. Robertson the 
historian " scarcely ever met any man whose conver- 
sation displayed greater vigor ;" the Duchess of Gor- 
don declared that he " carried her off her feet ;" and, 
when he came late to an inn, the servants would get 
out of bed to hear him talk. But, in these early days 
at least, he was determined to shine by any means. 
He made himself feared in the village for his tongue. 
He would crush weaker men to their faces, or even 
perhaps — for the statement of Sillar is not absolute — 
say cutting things of his acquaintances behind their 
back. At the church door, between sermons, he 
would parade his religious views amid hisses. These 
details stamp the man. -He had no genteel timidities 
in the conduct of his life. He loved to force his per- 
sonality upon the world. He would please himself, 
and shine. Had he lived in the Paris of 1830, and 
joined his lot with the Romantics, we can conceive 
him writing Jehan for Jean, swaggering in Gautier's 
red waistcoat, and horrifying Bourgeois in a public 
cafe with paradox and gasconnade. 

A leading trait throughout his whole career was his 
desire to be in love. Ne fait pas ce four qui veuL 
His affections were often enough touched, but per- 
haps never engaged. He was all his life on a voyage 
of discovery, but it does not appear conclusively that he 



66 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ever touched the happy isle. A man brings to love 
a deal of ready-made sentiment, and even from child- 
hood obscurely prognosticates the symptoms of this 
vital malady. Burns was formed for love ; he had 
passion, tenderness, and a singular bent in the direc- 
tion ; he could foresee, with the intuition of an artist, 
what love ought to be ; and he could not conceive a 
worthy life without it. But he had ill-fortune, and 
was besides so greedy after every shadow of the true 
divinity, and so much the slave of a strong tempera- 
ment, that perhaps his nerve was relaxed and his heart 
had lost the power of self-devotion before an oppor- 
tunity occurred. The circumstances of his youth 
doubtless counted for something in the result. For 
the lads of Ayrshire, as soon as the day's work was 
over and the beasts were stabled, would take the road, 
it might be in a winter tempest, and travel perhaps 
miles by moss and moorland to spend an hour or two 
in courtship. Rule lo of the Bachelors' Club at Tar- 
bolton provides that " every man proper for a member 
of this Society must be a professed lover of one or 
^^zorg- of the female sex." The rich, as Burns himself 
points out, may have a choice of pleasurable occupa- 
tions, but these lads had nothing but their " cannie 
hour at e'en." It was upon love and flirtation that 
this rustic society was built ; gallantry was the es- 
sence of life among the Ayrshire hills as well as in the 
Court of Versailles ; and the days were distinguished 
from each other by love-letters, meetings, tiffs, lecon- 
ciliations, and expansions to the chos'en confidant, as 



SOME A SPE C TS OF R OBER T B URNS. 6 7 

in a comedy of IMarivaux. Here was a field for a 
man of Burns's indiscriminate personal ambition, 
where he might pursue his voyage of discovery in 
quest of true love, and enjoy temporary triumphs by 
the way. He was " constantly the victim of some fair 
enslaver" — at least, when it was not the other way 
about ; and there were often underplots and second- 
ary fair enslavers in the background. Many — or may 
we not say most ? — of these affairs were entirely arti- 
ficial. One, he tells us, he began out of " a vanity 
of showing his parts in courtship," for he piqued him- 
self on his ability at a love-letter. But, however they 
began, these flames of his were fanned into a passion 
ere the end ; and he stands unsurpassed in his power 
of self-deception, and positively without a competitor 
in the art, to use his own words, of " battering him- 
self into a warm affection," — a debilitating and futile 
exercise. Once he had worked himself into the vein, 
" the agitations of his mind and body" were an aston- 
ishment to all who knew him. Such a course as this, 
however pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to 
his nature. He sank more and more toward the pro- 
fessional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French 
call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of 
his seductions ; and the same cheap self-satisfaction 
finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the 
.scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well 
believe what we hear of his facility in striking up an 
acquaintance with women : he would have conquer- 
ing manners ; he would bear down upon his rustic 



6 8 SOME A SPE C TS OF K OBEK T B URNS. 

game with the grace that comes of absolute assurance 
• — the RicheHeu of Lochlea or Mossgiel. In yet an- 
other manner did these quaint ways of courtship help 
him into fame. If he were great as principal, he was 
unrivalled as confidant. He could enter into a pas- 
sion ; he could counsel wary moves, being, in his own 
phrase, so old a hawk ; nay, he could turn a letter for 
some unlucky swain, or even string a few lines of verse 
that should clinch the business and fetch the hesitating 
fair one to the ground. Nor, perhaps, was it only his 
" curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity" that recom- 
mended him for a second in such affairs ; it must 
have been a distinction to have the assistance and ad- 
vice of Rah the Rafiterj and one who was in no way 
formidable by himself might grow dangerous and at- 
tractive through the fame of his associate. 

I think we can conceive him, in these early years, 
in that rough moorland country, poor among the poor 
with his seven pounds a year, looked upon with doubt 
by respectable elders, but for all that the best talker, 
the best letter-writer, the most famous lover and con- 
fidant, the laureate poet, and the only man who wore 
his hair tied in the parish. He says he had then as 
high a notion of himself as ever after ; and I can well 
believe it. Among the youth he \N2W.^di facile pr in- 
ceps, an apparent god ; and even if, from time to 
time, the Reverend Mr. Auld should swoop upon him 
with the thunders of the Church, and, in company 
with seven others, Rab the Ranter must figure some 
fine Sunday on the stool of repentance, would there 



SOME A SPE CrS OF R OBER T B URNS. 6 9 

not be a sort of glory, an infernal apotheosis, in so 
conspicuous a shame ? Was not RicheUeu in disgrace 
more idoHzed than ever by the dames of Paris ? and 
when was the highwayman most acclaimed but on 
his way to Tyburn ? Or, to take a simile from nearer 
home, and still more exactly to the point, what could 
even corporal punishment avail, administered by a 
cold, abstract, unearthly schoolmaster, against the in- 
fluence and fame of the school's hero ? 

And now we come to the culminating point of 
Burns' s early period. He began to be received into 
the unknown upper world. His fame soon spread 
from among his fellow-rebels on the benches, and be- 
gan to reach the ushers and monitors of this great 
Ayrshire academy. This arose in part from his lax 
views about religion ; for at this time that old war of 
the creeds and confessors, which is always grumbling 
from end to end of our poor Scotland, brisked up in 
these parts into a hot and virulent skirmish ; and 
Burns found himself identified with the opposition 
party, — a clique of roaring lawyers and half-heretical 
divines, with wit enough to appreciate the value of the 
poet's help, and not sufiicient taste to moderate his 
grossness and personality. We may judge of their 
surprise when Holy Willie was put into 'their hand ; 
like the amorous lads of Tarbolton, they recognized 
in him the best of seconds. His satires began to go 
the round in manuscript ; Mr. Aiken, one of the 
lawyers, " read him into fame ;" he himself was soon 
welcome in many houses of a better sort, where his 



70 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

admirable talk, and his manners, which he had direct 
from his Maker, except for a brush he gave them at a 
country dancing school, completed what his poems 
had begun. We have a sight of him at his first visit 
to Adamhill, in his ploughman's shoes, coasting 
around the carpet as though that were sacred ground. 
But he soon grew used to carpets and their owners ; 
and he was still the superior of all whom he encoun- 
tered, and ruled the roost in conversation. Such was 
the impression made, that a young clergyman, himself 
a man of ability, trembled and became confused when 
he saw Robert enter the church in which he was to 
preach. . It is not surprising that the poet determined 
to publish : he had now stood the test of some pubr , 
licity, arxd under this hopeful impulse he composed in:/ 
six winter months the bulk of his more imporjari't 
poems. Here was a young man who, from a very 
humble place, was mounting rapidly ; from the cyiioy . 
sure of a parish, he had become the talk of a county'; 
once the bard of rural courtships, he was now about 
to appear as a bound and printed poet in the world's 
bookshops. 

A few more intimate strokes are necessary to com- 
plete the sketch. This strong young ploughman, 
who feared rto competitor with the flail, suffered like 
a fine lady from sleeplessness and vapors ; he would 
fall into the blackest melancholies, and be filled with 
remorse for the past and terror for the future. He 
was still not perhaps devoted to religion, but haunted 
by it ; and at a touch of sickness prostrated himself 



SOME A SPECTS OF ROBER T B URNS. 7 i 

before God in what I can only call unmanly peni- 
tence. As he had aspirations beyond his place in the 
world, so he had tastes, thoughts, and weaknesses to 
match. He loved to walk under a wood to the sound 
of a winter tempest ; he had a singular tenderness for 
animals ; he carried a book with him in his pocket 
when he went abroad, and wore out in this service 
two copies of the Man of Feeling. With young people 
in the field at work he was very long-suffering ; and 
when his brother Gilbert spoke sharply to them — " O 
man, ye are no for young folk," he would say, and 
give the defaulter a helping hand and a smile. In 
the hearts of the men whom he met, he read as in a 
book ; and, what is yet more rare, his knowledge of 
himself equalled his knowledge of others. There are 
no truer things said of Burns than what is to be found 
in his own letters. Country Don Juan as he was, he 
had none of that blind vanity which values itself on 
what it is not ; he knew his own strength and weak- 
ness to a hair : he took himself boldly for wnat he 
was, and, except in moments of hypochondria, de- 
clared himself content. 

The Love Stories. 

On the night of Mauchline races, 1785, the young 
men and women of the place joined in a penny ball, 
according to their custom. In the same set danced 
Jean Armour, the master-mason's daughter, and our 
dark-eyed Don Juan. His dog (not the immortal 
Luath, but a successor unknown to fame, caret quia 



72 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

vate sacro), apparently sensible of some neglect, fol- 
lowed his master to and fro, to the confusion of the 
dancers. Some mirthful comments followed ; and 
Jean heard the poet say to his partner— or, as I should 
imagine, laughingly launch the remark to the com- 
pany at large — that ' ' he wished he could get any of 
the lasses to like him as w^ell as his dog. ' ' Some 
time after, as the girl was bleaching clothes on Mauch- 
line green, Robert chanced to go by, still accompanied 
by his dog ; and the dog, " scouring in long excur- 
sion," scampered with four black paws across the 
linen. This brought the two into conversation ; when 
Jean, with a somewhat hoydenish advance, inquired 
if "he had yet got any of the lasses to like him as 
well as his dog ?" It is one of the misfortunes of the 
professional Don Juan that his honor forbids him to 
refuse battle ; he is in life like the Roman soldier 
upon duty, or like the sworn physician who must at- 
tend on all diseases. Burns accepted the provocation ; 
hungry hope reawakened in his heart ; here w^as a 
girl — pretty, simple at least, if not honesdy stupid, 
and plainly not averse to his attentions : it seemed to 
him once more as if love might here be waiting him. 
Had he but known the truth ! for this facile and 
empty-headed girl had nothing more in view than a 
flirtation ; and her heart, from the first and en to the 
end of her story, was engaged by another man. 
Burns once more commenced the celebrated process 
of "battering himself into a warm affection ;" and 
the proofs of his success are to be found in many 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 73 

•/erses of the period. Nor did he succeed with himsell 
only ; Jean, with her heart still elsewhere, succumbed 
to his fascination, and early in the next year the nat- 
ural consequence became manifest. It was a heavy 
stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had trifled 
with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's seri- 
ous issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes ; the 
best she had now to expect was marriage with a man 
who was a stranger to her dearest thoughts ; she 
might now be glad if she could get what she would 
never have chosen. As for Burns, at the stroke of 
the calamity he recognized that his voyage of discov- 
ery had led him into a wrong hemisphere — that he 
was not, and never had been, really in love with 
Jean. Hear him in the pressure of the hour. 
' ' Against two things, ' ' he writes, ' ' I am as fixed as 
fate— staying at home, and owning her conjugally. 
The first, by heaven, I will not do ! — the last, by 
hell, I will never do !" And then he adds, perhaps 
already in a more relenting temper : "If you see 
Jean, tell her I will meet her, so God help me in my 
hour of need." They met accordingly ; and Burns, 
touched with her misery, came down from these 
heights of independence, and gave her a written ac- 
knowledgment of marriage. It is the punishment of 
Don Juanism to create continually false positions — 
relations in life which are wrong in themselves, and 
which it is equally wrong to break or to perpetuate. 
This was such a case. Worldly Wiseman would have 
laughed and gone his way ; let us be glad that Burns 



7 4 SOME A SPE C TS OF R OBER T B URNS. 

was better counselled by his heart. When we discover 
that we can be no longer true, the next best is to be 
kind. I dare say he came away from that interview 
not very content, but with a glorious conscience ; 
and as he went homeward, he would sing his favorite, 
" How are Thy servants blest, O Lord !" Jean, on 
the other hand, armed with her " lines," confided her 
position to the master-mason, her father, and his wife. 
Burns and his brother were then in a fair way to ruin 
themselves in their farm ; the poet was an execrable 
match for any well-to-do country lass ; and perhaps 
old Armour had an inkling of a previous attachment 
on his daughter's part. At least, he was not so much 
incensed by her slip from virtue as by the marriage 
which had been designed to cover it. Of this he 
would not hear a word. Jean, who had besought the 
acknowledgment only to appease her parents, and not 
at all from any violent inclination to the poet, readily 
gave up the paper for destruction ; and all parties 
imagined, although wrongly, that the marriage was 
thus dissolved. To a proud man like Burns here was 
a crushing blow. The concession which had been 
wrung from his pity was now publicly thrown back in 
his teeth. The Armour family preferred disgrace to 
his connection. Since the promise, besides, he had 
doubtless been busy " battering himself" back again 
into his affection for the girl ; and the blow would 
not only take him in his vanity, but wound him at 
the heart. 

He relieved himself in verse ; but for such a smart- 



SOME A SPE CTS OF R OBER T B URNS. 7 5 

ing affront manuscript poetry was insufficient to con. 
sole him. He must find a more powerful remedy in 
good flesh and blood, and after this discomfiture, set 
forth again at once upon his voyage of discovery in 
quest of love. It is perhaps one of the most touching 
things in human nature, as it is a commonplace of 
psychology, that when a man has just lost hope or 
confidence in one love, he is then most eager to find 
and lean upon another. The universe could not be 
yet exhausted ; there must be hope and love waiting 
for him somewhere ; and so, with his head down, this 
poor, insulted poet ran once more upon his fate. 
There was an innocent and gentle Highland nursery- 
maid at service in a neighboring family ; and he had 
soon battered himself and her into a warm affection 
and a secret engagement. Jean's marriage hnes had 
not been destroyed till March 13, 1786 ; yet all was 
settled between Burns an.d Mary Campbell by Sunday, 
jMay 14, when they met for the last time, and said 
farewell with rustic solemnities upon the banks of 
Ayr. They each wet their hands in a stream, and, 
standing one on either bank, held a Bible between 
them as they vowed eternal faith. Then they ex- 
changed Bibles, on one of which Burns, for greater 
security, had inscribed texts as to the binding nature 
of an oath ; and surely, if ceremony can do aught to 
fix the wandering affections, here were two people 
united for life. IMary came of a superstitious family, 
so that she perhaps insisted on these rites ; but they 
must have been eminentlv to the taste of Burns at 



76 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

this period ; for nothing would seem superfluous, and 
no oath great enough, to stay his tottering constancy. 
Events of consequence now happened thickly in 
the poet's life. His book was announced ; the 
Armours sought to summon him at law for the ali- 
ment of the child ; he lay here and there in hiding to 
correct the sheets ; he was under an engagement for 
Jamaica, where Mary was to join him as his wife ; 
now, he had " orders within three weeks at latest to 
repair aboard the Nancy, Captain Smith ;" now his 
chest was already on the road to Greenock ; and now, 
in the wild autumn weather on the moorland, he 
measures verses of farewell : — 

" The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr !" 

But the great master dramatist had secretly another in- 
tention for the piece ; by the most violent and com- 
plicated solution, in which death and birth and sud- 
den fame all play a part as interposing deities, the 
act-drop fell upon a scene of transformation. Jean 
was brought to bed of twins, and, by an amicable ar- 
rangement, the Burnses took the boy to bring up by 
hand, while the girl remained with her mother. The 
success of the book was immediate and emphatic ; it 
put ^20 at once into the author's purse ; and he was 
encouraged upon all hands to go to Edinburgh and 
push his success in a second and larger edition. 
Third and last in these series of interpositions, a letter 
came one day to Mossgiel Farm for Robert. He 
went to the window to read it ; a sudden change came 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 77 

over his face, and he left the room without a word. 
Years afterward, when the story began to leak out, his 
family understood that he had then learned the death 
of Highland Mary. Except in a few poems and a few 
dry indications purposely misleading as to date, Burns 
himself made no reference to this passage of his life ; 
it was an adventure of which, for I think sufficient 
reasons, he desired to bury the details. Of one thing 
we may be glad : in after years he visited the poor 
girl's mother, and left her with the impression that he 
was " a real warm-hearted chield. " 

Perhaps a month after he received this intelligence, 
he set out for Edinburgh on a pony he had borrowed 
from a friend. The town that winter was *' agog with 
the ploughman poet." Robertson, Dugald Stewart, 
Blair, ** Duchess Gordon and all the gay world," 
were of his acquaintance. Such a revolution is not 
to be found in literary history. He was now, it must 
be remembered, twenty-seven years of age ; he had 
fought since his early boyhood an obstinate battle 
against poor soil, bad seed, and inclement seasons, 
wading deep in Ayrshire mosses, guiding the plough 
in the furrow, wielding " the thresher's weary flingin'- 
tree ;" and his education, his diet, and his pleasures, 
had been those of a Scotch countryman. Now he 
stepped forth suddenly among the polite and learned. 
We can see him as he then was, in his boots and 
buckskins, his blue coat and waistcoat striped with 
baff and blue, like a farmer in his Sunday best ; the 
heavy ploughman's figure firmly planted on its burly 



78 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

legs ; his face full of sense and shrewdness, and with 
a somewhat melancholy air of thought, and his large 
dark eye " literally glowing" as he spoke. " I never 
saw such another eye in a human head," says Walter 
wScott, " though I have seen the most distinguished 
men of my time." With men, whether they were 
lords or omnipotent critics, his manner was plain, dig- 
nified, and free from bashfulness or affectation. If 
he made a slip, he had the social courage to pass on 
and refrain from explanation. He was not embar- 
rassed in this society, because he read and judged the 
men ; he could spy snobbery in a titled lord ; and, 
as tor the critics, he dismissed their system in an epi- 
gram. "These gentlemen," said he, "remind me 
of some spinsters in my country who spin their thread 
so fine that it is neither fit for weft nor woof." 
Ladies, on the other hand, surprised him ; he was 
scarce commander of himself in their society ; he was 
disqualified by his acquired nature as a Don Juan ; 
and he, who had been so much at his ease with coun- 
try lasses, treated the town dames to an extreme of 
deference. One lady, who met him at a ball, gave 
Chambers a speaking sketch of his demeanor. " His 
manner was not prepossessing — scarcely, she thinks, 
manly or natural. It seemed as if he affected a rus- 
ticity or landertness, so that when he said the music 
was ' bonnie, bonnie, ' it was like the expression of a 
child." These would be company manners ; and 
doubtless on a slight degree of intimacy the affecta- 
tion would grow less. And his talk to women had 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 79 

always ** a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, 
which engaged the attention particularly." 

The Edinburgh magnates (to conclude this episode 
at once) behaved well to Burns from first to last. 
Were heaven- born genius to revisit us in similar guise, 
I am not venturing too far when I say that he need 
expect neither so warm a welcome nor such solid 
help. Although Burns was only a peasant, and one 
of no very elegant reputation as to morals, he was 
made welcome to their homes. They gave him a 
great deal of good advice, helped him to some five 
hundred pounds of ready money, and got him, as 
soon as he asked it, a place in the Excise. Burns, on 
his part, bore the elevation with perfect dignity ; and 
with perfect dignity returned, Vv'hen the time had 
come, into a country privacy of life. His powerful 
sense never deserted him, and from the first he recog- 
nized that his Edinburgh popularity was but an ova- 
tion and the affair of a day. He wrote a few letters 
in a high-flown, bombastic vein of gratitude ; but in 
practice he suffered no man to intrude upon his self- 
respect. On the other hand, he never turned his 
back, even for a moment, on his old associates ; and 
he was always ready to sacrifice an acquaintance to a 
friend, although the acquaintance were a duke. He 
would be a bold man who should promise similar 
conduct in equally exacting circumstances. It was, 
in short, an admirable appearance on the stage of life 
— socially successful, intimately self-respecting, and 
like a gentleman from first to last. 



So SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

In the present study, this must only be taken by 
the way, while we return to Burns' s love affairs. Even 
on the road to Edinburgh he had seized upon the op- 
portunity of a flirtation, and had carried the " batter- 
ing" so far that when next he moved from town, it 
was to steal two days with this anonymous fair one. 
The exact importance to Burns of this affair may be 
gathered from the song in which he commemorated 
its occurrence. "I love the dear lassie," he sings, 
** because she loves me ;" or, in the tongue of prose : 
" Finding an opportunity, I did not hesitate to profit 
by it ; and even now, if it returned, I should not hesi- 
tate to profit by it again." A love thus founded has 
no interest for mortal man. Meantime, early in the 
winter, and only once, we find him regretting Jean in 
his correspondence. "Because" — such is his reason 
— " because he does not think he v/ill ever meet so 
delicious an armful again ;" and then, after a brief 
excursion into verse, be goes straight on to describe a 
new episode in the voyage of discovery with the daugh- 
ter of a Lothian farmer for a heroine. I must ask the 
reader to follow all these references to his future wife ; 
they are essential to the comprehension of Burns's 
character and fate. In June, we find him back at 
Mauchline, a fam^ous man. There, the Armour 
family greeied him with a " mean, servile compli- 
ance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was 
not less compliant ; a second time the poor girl sub- 
mitted to the fascination of the man whom she did 
not love, and whom she had so cruelly insulted little 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 8i 

more than a year ago ; and, though Burns took ad- 
vantage of her weakness, it was in the ugHest and most 
cynical spiiit, and with a heart absolutely indifferent. 
Judge of this by a letter written some twenty days after 
his return — a letter to my mind among the most de- 
grading in the whole collection — a letter which seems 
to have been inspired by a boastful, libertine bagman. 
" I am afraid," it goes, " I have almost ruined one 
source, the principal one, indeed, of my former hap- 
piness — the eternal propensity I always had to fall in 
love. My heart no more glows with feverish rapture ; 
1 have no paradisiacal evening interviews." Even the 
process of " battering" has failed him, you perceive. 
Still he had some one in his eye — a lady, if you 
please, with a fine figure and elegant manners, and 
who had '* seen the politest quarters in Europe." " I 
frequently visited her," he writes, " and after passing 
regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant 
formal bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I 
ventured, in my careless way, to talk of friendship in 
rather ambiguous terms ; and after her return to 
, I wrote her in the same terms. Miss, con- 
struing my remarks further than even I intended, flew 
off in a tangent of female dignity and reserve, like a 
mounting lark in an April morning ; and wrote me 
an answer which measured out very completely what 
an immense way I had to travel before I could reach 
the climate of her favors. But I am an old hawk at 
the sport, and wrote her such a cool, deliberate, pru- 
dent reply, as brought my bird from her aerial tower- 



82 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ings, pop, down to my foot, like Corporal Trim's 
hat." I avow a carnal longing, after this transcrip- 
tion, to buffet the Old Hawk about the ears. There 
is little question that to this lady he must have re- 
peated his addresses, and that he was by her (Miss 
Chalmers) eventually, though not at all unkindly, re- 
jected. One more detail to characterize the period. 
Six months after the date of this letter, Burns, back in 
Edinburgh, is served with a writ m vieditatmie fugce, 
on behalf of some Edinburgh fair one, probably of 
humble rank, who declared an intention of adding to 
his family. 

About the beginning of December (1787), anew 
period opens in the story of the poet's random affec- 
tions. He met at a tea party one Mrs. Agnes 
M'Lehose, a married woman of about his own age, 
who, with her two children, had been deserted by an 
unworthy husband. She had wit, could use her pen, 
and had read Werther with attention. Sociable, and 
even somewhat frisky, there was a good, sound, hu- 
man kernel in the woman ; a warmth of love, strong 
dogmatic religious feeling, and a considerable, but 
not authoritative, sense of the proprieties. Of what 
biographers refer to daintily as " her somewhat volup- 
tuous style of beauty," judging from the silhouette 
in Mr. Scott Douglas's invaluable edition, the reader 
will be fastidious if he does not approve. Take her 
for all in all, I believe she was the best woman Burns 
encountered. The pair took a fancy for each other 
on the spot ; Mrs. M'Lehose, in her turn, invited 



SOME ASPECTS OE ROBERT BURNS, 83 

him to tea ; but the poet, in his character of the Old 
Hawk, preferred a tete-a-tcie, excused himself at the 
last moment, and offered a visit instead. An accident 
confined him to his room for nearly a month, and this 
led to the famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspond- 
ence. It was begun in simple sport ; they are al- 
ready at their fifth or sixth exchange, when Clarinda 
writes : "It is really curious so vcvwokifun passing be- 
tween two persons who saw each other onlyowc^y" 
but it is hardly safe for a man and woman in the flower 
of their years to write almost daily, and sometimes in 
terms too ambiguous, sometimes in terms too plain, 
and generally in terms too warm, for mere acquaint- 
ance. The exercise partakes a little of the nature of 
battering, and danger may be apprehended when next 
they meet. It is difficult to give any account of this 
remarkable correspondence ; it is too far away from 
us, and perhaps, not yet far enough, in point of time 
and manner ; the imagmation is baffled by these 
stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, 
into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one 
famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect 
the thought of his mistress with the changing phases 
of the year ; it was enthusiastically admired by the 
swain, but on the modern mind produces mild amaze- 
ment and alarm. " Oh, Clarinda," writes Burns, 
" shall we not meet in a state — some yet unknown 
state — of being, where the lavish hand of Plenty shall 
minister to the highest wish of Benevolence, and 
where the chill north wind of Prudence shall never 



84 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

blow over the flowery field of Enjoyment?" The 
design may be that of an Old Hawk, but the style is 
more suggestive of a Bird of Paradise. It is some- 
times hard to fancy they are not gravely making fun 
of each other as they write. Religion, poetry, love, 
and charming sensibility, are the current topics. " I 
am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest 
enthusiasm for religion," writes Burns ; and the pair 
entertained a fiction that this was their " favorite sub- 
ject." "This is Sunday," writes the lady, ** and 
not a word on our favorite subject. O fy ! * divine 
Clarinda ! ' " 1 suspect, although quite unconsciously 
on the part of the lady, who was bent on his redemp- 
tion, they but used the favorite subject as a stalking- 
horse. In the meantime, the sportive acquaintance 
was ripening steadily into a genuine passion. Visits 
took place, and then became frequent. Clarinda' s 
friends were hurt and suspicious ; her clergyman in- 
terfered ; she herself had smart attacks of conscience ; 
but her heart had gone from her control ; it was alto- 
gether his, and she ** counted all things but loss — 
heaven excepted — that she might win and keep him." 
Burns himself was transported while in her neighbor- 
hood, but his transports somewhat rapidly declined 
during an absence. I am tempted to imagine that, 
v.'omanlike, he took on the color of his mistress's feel- 
ing ; that he could not but heat himself at the fire of 
her unaffected passion ; but that, like one who should 
leave the hearth upon a winter's night, his temperature 
soon fell when he was out of sight, and in a word, 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 85 

though he could share the symptoms, that he had 
never shared the disease. At the same time, amid 
the fustian of the letters there are forcible and true ex- 
pressions, and the love verses that he wrote upon 
Clarmda are among the most moving in the language. 
We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter, 
Jean once more in the family way, was turned out of 
doors by her family ; and Burns had her received and 
cared for m the house of a friend. For he remained 
to the last imperfect in his character of Don Juan, 
and lacked the sinister courage to desert his victim. 
About the middle of February (1788), he had to tear 
himself from his Clarinda and make a journey into 
the south west on business. Clarinda gave him two 
shirts for his little son. They were daily to meet in 
prayer at an appointed hour. Burns, too late for the 
post at Glasgow, sent her a letter by parcel that she 
might not have to wait.. Clarinda on her part writes, 
this time with a beautiful simplicity : " I think the 
streets look deserted-like since Monday ; and there's 
a certain insipidity in good kind folks I once enjoyed 
not a little. Miss Wardrobe supped here on Monday. 
She once named you, which kept me from falling 
asleep. I drank your health in a glass of ale — as the 
lasses do at Hallowe'en — ' in to mysel'.' " Arrived 
at Mauchline, Burns installed Jean Armour in a lodg- 
ing, and prevailed on Mrs. Armour to promise her 
help and countenance in the approaching confine- 
ment. This was kind at least ; but hear his expres* 
sions : " I have taken her a room : I have taken her 



86 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

to my arms ; I have given her a mahogany bed ; 1 
have given her a guinea. ... I swore her privately 
and solemnly never to attempt any claim on me as a 
husband, even though an}'body should persuade her 
she had such a claim — which she has not, neither 
during my life nor after my death. She did all this 
like a good girl. " And then he took advantage oi 
the situation. To Clarinda he wrote : " I this morn- 
ing called for a certain woman. I am disgusted 
with her; I cannot endure her;" and he accused 
her of " tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and 
mercenary fawning." This was already in March ; 
by the 13th of that month he was back in Edin- 
burgh. On the 17th he wrote to Clarinda : " Your 
hopes, your fears, your cares, my love, are mine ; so 
don't mind them. I will take you in my hand through 
the dreary wilds of this world, and scare away the 
ravening bird or beast that would annoy you." 
Again, on the 21st : " Will you open, with satisfac- 
tion and delight, a letter from a man who loves you, 
who has loved you, and who will love you, to death, 
through death, and for ever. . . . How rich am I to 
have such a treasure as you ! . . . ' The Lord God 
knoweth,' and, perhaps, * Israel he shall know,' my 
love and your merit. Adieu, Clarinda 1 I am going 
to remember you in my prayers." By the 7th of 
April, seventeen days later, he had already decided to 
make Jean Armour publicly his wife. 

A more astonishing stage-trick is not to be found. 
And yet his conduct is seen, upon a nearer examina- 



SOME A SFE C TS OF RO BER T B URNS. 8 7 

tion, to be grounded both in reason and in kindness. 
He was now about to embark on a solid worldly 
career ; he had taken a farm ; the affair with Clarinda, 
however gratifying to his heart, was too contingent to 
offer any great consolation to a man like Burns, to 
whom marriage must have seemed the very dawn of 
hope and self-respect. This is to regard the question 
from its lowest aspect ; but there is no doubt that he 
entered on this new period of his life with a sincere 
determination to do right. He had just helped his 
brother with a loan of a hundred and eighty pounds ; 
should he do nothing for the poor girl whom he had 
ruined ? It was true he could not do as he did with- 
out brutally wounding Clarinda ; that was the punish- 
ment of his bygone fault ; he was, as he truly says, 
" damned with a choice only of different species of 
error and misconduct." To be professional Don 
Juan, to accept the provocation of any lively lass upon 
the village green, may thus lead a man through a 
series of detestable words and actions, and land him 
at last in an undesired and most unsuitable union for 
life. If he had been strong enough to refrain or bad 
enough to persevere in evil ; if he had only not been 
Don Juan at all, or been Don Juan altogether, there 
had been some possible road for him throughout this 
troublesome world ; but a man, alas ! who is equally at 
the call of his worse and better instincts, stands among 
changing events without foundation or resource. ^ 

^ For the love affairs see, in particular, Mr. Scott Douglas's edition un- 
der the different dates. 



SS SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Downward Course. 

It may be questionable whether any marriage could 
have tamed Burns ; but it is at least certain that there 
was no hope for him in the marriage he contracted. 
He did right, but then he had done wrong before ; it 
was. as I said, one of those relations in life which it 
seems equally wrong to break or to perpetuate. He 
neither loved nor respected his wife. " God knows," 
he writes, " my choice was as random as blind man's 
buff." He consoles himself by the thought that he 
has acted kindly to her ; that she " has the most 
sacred enthusiasm of attachment to him ;" that she 
has a good figure ; that she has a " wood -note wild," 
'* her voice rising with ease to B natural, " no less. 
The effect on the reader is one of unmingled pity for 
both parties concerned. This was not the wife who 
(in his own words) could " enter into his favorite 
studies or relish his favorite authors ;" this was not 
even a wife, after the affair of the marriage lines, in 
whom a husband could joy to place his trust. Let 
her manage a farm with sense, let her voice rise to B 
natural all day long, she would still be a peasant to 
her lettered lord, and an object of pity rather than of 
equal affection. She could now be faithful, she could 
now be forgiving, she could now be generous even to 
a pathetic and touching degree ; but coming from 
one who was unloved, and who had scarce shown her- 
self worthy of the sentiment, these were all virtues 
thrown away, which could neither change her hus- 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 89 

band's heart nor affect the inherent destiny of their 
relation. From the outset, it was a marriage that had 
no root in nature ; and we find him, erelong, lyri- 
cally regretting Highland IMary, renewing correspond- 
ence with Clarinda in the warmest language, on 
doubtful terms with jNIrs. Riddel, and on terms unfor- 
tunately beyond any question with Anne Park. 

Alas ! this was not the only ill circumstance in his 
future. He had been idle for some eighteen months, 
superintending his new edition, hanging on to settle 
with the publisher, travelling in the Highlands with 
Willie Nichol, or philandering with Mrs. M'Lehose ; 
and in this period the radical part of the man had 
suffered irremediable hurt. He had lost his habits of 
industry, and formed the habit of pleasure. Apolo- 
getical biographers assure us of the contrary ; but 
from the first, he saw and recognized the danger for 
himself ; his mind, he .writes, is " enervated to an 
alarming degree" by idleness and dissipation ; and 
again, '* my mind has been vitiated with idleness." 
It never fairly recovered. To business he could 
bring the required diligence and attention without dif- 
ficulty ; but he was thenceforward incapable, except 
in rare instances, of that superior effort of concentra- 
tion which is required for serious literary work. He 
may be said, indeed, to have worked no more, and 
only amused himself with letters. The man who had 
written a volume of m-asterpieces in six months, during 
the remainder of his life rarely found courage for any 
more sustained effort than a song. And the nature 



90 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BUR Nib. 

of the songs is itself characteristic of these idle later 
years ; for they are often as polished and elaborate as 
his earlier works were frank, and headlong, and col- 
loquial ; and this sort of verbal elaboration in short 
flights is, for a man of literary turn, simply the most 
agreeable of pastimes. The change in manner co- 
incides exactly with the Edinburgh visit. In 1786 he 
had written the Address to a Louse, which may be 
taken as an extreme instance of the first manner ; and 
already, in 1787, we come upon the rosebud pieces to 
Miss Cruikshank, which are extreme examples of the 
second. The change was, therefore, the direct and 
very natural consequence of his great change in life ; 
but it is not the less typical of his loss of moral cour- 
age that he should have given up all larger ventures, 
nor the less melancholy that a man who first attacked 
liteiature with a hand that seemed capable of moving 
mountains, should have spent his later years in whit- 
tling cherry-stones. 

Meanwhile, the farm did not prosper ; he had to 
join to it the salary of an exciseman ; at last he had 
to give It up, and rely altogether on the latter resource. 
He was an active officer ; and, though he sometimes 
tempered severity with mercy, we have local testimony 
oddly representing the public feeling of the period, 
that, while " in everything else he was a perfect 
gentleman, when he met with anything seizable he was 
no better than any other gauger." 

There is but one manifestation of the man in these 
last years which need delay us : and that was the sud- 



SOME A SPE CTS OF R OBER T B URNS. 9 1 

den interest in politics which arose from his sympathy 
with the great French Revolution. His only political 
feeling had been hitherto a sentimental Jacobitism, not 
more or less respectable than that of Scott, Aytoun, 
and the rest of what George Borrow has nicknamed 
the " Charlie over the water" Scotchmen. It was a 
sentiment almost entirely literary and picturesque in 
its origin, built on ballads and the adventures of the 
Young Chevalier ; and in Burns it is the more ex- 
cusable, because he lay out of the way of active poli- 
tics in his youth. With the great French Revolution, 
something living, practical, and feasible appeared to 
him for the first time in this realm of human action. 
The young ploughman who had desired so earnestly 
to rise, now reached out his sympathies to a whole 
nation animated with the same desire. Already in 
1788 we find the old Jacobitism hand in hand with 
the new popular doctrine, when, in d letter of indig- 
nation against the zeal of a Whig clergyman, he 
writes : "I dare say the American Congress in 1776 
will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the 
English Convention was in 1688 ; and that their pos- 
terity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance 
from us, as duly and sincerely as we do ours from the 
oppressive measures of the wrong-headed house of 
Stuart." As time wore on, his sentiments grew more 
pronounced and even violent ; but there was a basis 
of sense and generous feeling to his hottest excess. 
What he asked was a fair chance for the individual in 
life ; an open road to success and distinction for all 



92 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

classes of men. It was in the same spirit that he had 
helped to found a public library in the parish where 
his farm was situated, and that he sang his fervent 
snatches against tyranny and tyrants. Witness, were 
it alone, this verse : — 

" Here's freedom to him that wad read, 
Here's freedom to him that wad write ; 
There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard 
But them wham the truth wad indite." 

Yet his enthusiasm for the cause was scarce guided by 
wisdom. Many stories are preserved of the bitter and 
unwise words he used in country coteries ; how he 
proposed Washington's health as an amendment to 
Pitt's, gave as a toast " the last verse of the last chap- 
ter of Kings," and celebrated Dumouriez in a dog- 
grel impromptu full of ridicule and hate. Now his 
sympathies would inspire him with Scots, wha hae j 
now involve him in a drunken broil with a loyal 
officer, and consequent apologies and explanations, 
hard to offer for a man of Burns' s stomach. Nor was 
this the front of his offending. On February 27, 
1792, he took part in the capture of an armed smug- 
gler, bought at the subsequent sale four carronades, 
and despatched them with a letter to the French As- 
sembly. Letter and guns were stopped at Dover by 
the English officials ; there was trouble for Burns with 
his superiors ; he was reminded firmly, however deli- 
cately, that, as a paid official, it was his duty to obey 
and to be silent ; and all the blood of this poor, 
proud, and falling man must have rushed to his head 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 93 

at the humiliation. His letter to jMr. Erskine, subse- 
quently Earl of i\Iar, testifies, in its turgid, turbulent 
phrases, to a perfect passion of alarmed self-respect 
and vanity. He had been muzzled, and muzzled, 
when all was said, by his paltry salary as an excise- 
man ; alas ! had he not a family to keep } Already, 
he wrote, he looked forward to some such judgment 
from a hackney scribbler as this : " Burns, notwith- 
standing i\\Q /an/aronnade of independence to be found 
in his works, and after having been held forth to view 
and to public estimation as a man of some genius, 
yet^ quite destitute of resources within himself to sup- 
port his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a paltry 
exciseman, and shrunk out the rest of his insignificant 
existence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the 
vilest of mankind." And then on he goes, in a style 
of rhodomontade, but filled with living indignation, 
10 declare his right to a political opinion, and his will- 
ingness to shed his blood for the political birthright of 
his sons. Poor, perturbed spirit ! he was indeed ex- 
ercised in vain ; those who share and those who differ 
from his sentiments about the Revolution, alike un- 
derstand and sympathize with him in this painful 
strait ; for poetry and human manhood are lasting like 
the race, and politics, which are but a wrongful striv- 
ing after right, pass and change from year to year and 
age to age. The Twa Dogs has already outlasted 
the constitution of Sieyesand the policy of the Whigs ; 
and Burns is better known among English-speaking 
races than either Pitt or Fox. 



94 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Meanwhile, whether as a man, a husband, or a 
poet, his steps led downward. He knew, knew bit- 
terly, that the best was out of him ; he refused to 
make another volume, for he felt that it would be a 
disappointment ; he grew petulantly alive to criticism, 
unless he was sure it reached him from a friend. For 
his songs, he would take nothing ; they were all that 
he could do ; the proposed Scotch play, the proposed 
series of Scotch tales in verse, all had gone to water ; 
and in a fling of pain and disappointment, which is 
surely noble with the nobility of a viking, he would 
rather stoop to borrow than to accept money for these 
last and inadequate efforts of his muse. And this des- 
perate abnegation rises at times near to the height of 
madness ; as when he pretended that he had not writ- 
ten, but only found and published, his immortal Aula 
Lang Syne. In the same spirit he became more 
scrupulous as an artist ; he was doing so little, he 
would fain do that little well ; and about two months 
before his death, he asked Thomson to send back all 
his manuscripts for revisal, saying that he would rather 
write five songs to his taste than twice that number 
otherwise. The battle of his life was lost ; in forlorn 
efforts to do well, in desperate submissions to evil, the 
last years flew by. His temper is dark and explosive, 
launching epigrams, quarrelling with his friends, jeal- 
ous of young puppy officers. He tries to be a good 
father ; he boasts himself a libertine. Sick, sad, and 
jaded, he can refuse no occasion of temporary pleas- 
ure, no opportunity to shine ; and he who had once 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 95 

refused the invitations of lords and ladies is now 
whistled to the inn by any curious stranger. His 
death (July 21, 1796), in his thirty -seventh year, was 
indeed a kindly dispensation. It is the fashion to say 
he died of drink ; many a man has drunk more and 
yet lived with reputation, and reached a good age. 
That drink and debauchery helped to destroy his con- 
stitution, and were the means of his unconscious sui- 
cide, is doubtless true ; but he had failed in life, had 
lost his power of work, and was already married to the 
poor, unworthy, patient Jean, before he had shown 
his inclination to convivial nights, or at least before 
that inclination had become dangerous either to his 
health or his self-respect. He had trifled with life, 
and must pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don 
Juan, he had grasped at temporary pleasures, and sub- 
stantial happiness and solid industry had passed him 
by. He died of being Robert Burns, and there is no 
levity in such a statement of the case ; for shall we 
not, one and all, deserve a similar epitaph ? 

Works. 

The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon 
me throughout this paper only to touch upon those 
points in the life of Burns where correction or ampli- 
fication seemed desirable, leaves me little opportunity 
to speak of the v%^orks which have made his name so 
famous. Yet, even here, a few observations seem 
necessary. 

At the time when the poet madeTiis appearance and 



96 SOME A SPECTS OF ROBER T B URNS. 

great first success, his work was remarkable in two 
ways. For, first, in an age when poetry had become 
abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to 
deal with shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifica- 
tions, he dealt with the actual circumstances of his life, 
however matter-of-fact and sordid these might be. 
And, second, in a time when English versification was 
particularly stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were 
used with ultra-academical timidity, he wrote verses 
that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible, and used 
language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed 
most fit to give a clear impression. If you take even 
those English authors whom v/e know Burns to have 
most admired and studied, you will see at once that 
he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shen- 
stone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as 
he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a 
description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in 
sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle 
of incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and 
I positively cannot recollect whether his hero was slid- 
ing or walking ; as though a writer should describe 
a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still uncer- 
tain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and 
stubborn advance of foot. There could be no such 
ambiguity in Burns ; his work is at the opposite pole 
from such indefi^nite and stammering performances ; 
and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone 
would only lead a man farther and farther from writ- 
ing the Address to a Louse, Yet Burns, like most 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 97 

great artists, proceeded from a school and continued a 
tradition ; only the school and tradition were Scotch, 
and not English. While the English language was 
becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and 
English letters more colorless and slack, there was an- 
other dialect in the sister country, and a different 
school of poetry tracing its descent, through King 
James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts 
for much ; for it was then written colloquially, which 
kept it fresh and supple ; and, although not shaped 
for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium for 
all that had to do with social hfe. Hence, whenever 
Scotch poets left their laborious imitations of bad 
English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, 
their style would kindle, and they would write of their 
convivial and somewhat gross existences with pith and 
point. In Ramsay, and far more in the poor lad 
Fergusson, there was mettle, humor, literary courage, 
and a power of saying what they wished to say defi- 
nitely and brightly, which in the latter case should 
have justified great anticipations. Had Burns died at 
the same age as Fergusson, he would have left us lit- 
erally nothing worth remark. To Ramsay and to 
Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very uncom- 
mon degree, not only following their tradition and 
using their measures, but directly and avowedly imi- 
tating their pieces. The same tendency to borrow a 
hint, to work on some one else's foundation, is not- 
able in Burns from first to last, in the period of song- 
writing as well as in that of the early poems ; and 



98 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Strikes one oddly in a man of such deep originality, 
who left so strong a print on all he touched, and whose 
work is so greatly distinguished by that character of 
" inevitability" which Wordsworth denied to Goethe. 

When we remember Burns' s obligations to his pred- 
ecessors, we must never forget his immense advances 
on them. They had already " discovered " nature ; 
-but Burns discovered poetry— a higher and more in- 
tense way of thinking of the things that go to make 
up nature, a higher and more ideal key of words in 
which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson ex- 
celled at making a popular — or shall we say vulgar ? 
— sort of society verses, comical and prosaic, written, 
you would say, in taverns while a supper party waited 
for its laureate's word ; but on the appearance of 
Burns, this coarse and laughing literature was touched 
to finer issues, and learned gravity of thought and 
natural pathos 

What he had gained from his predecessors was a 
direct, speaking style, and to walk on his own feet in- 
stead of on academical stilts. There was never a man 
of letters with more absolute command of his means ; 
and we may say of him, without excess, that his style 
was his slave. Hence that energy of epithet, so con- 
cise and telling, that a foreigner is tempted to explain 
it by some special richness or aptitude in the dialect 
he wrote. Hence that Homeric justice and complete- 
ness of description which gives us the very physiog- 
nomy of nature, in body and detail, as nature is. 
Hence, too, the unbroken literary quality of his best 



SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 99 

pieces, which keeps him from any slip into the weari- 
ful trade of word painting, and presents everything, as 
everything should be presented by the art of words, in 
a clear, continuous medium of thought. Principal 
Shairp, for instance, gives us a paraphrase of one 
tough verse of the original ; and for those who know 
the Greek poets only by paraphrase, this has the very 
quality they are accustomed to look for and admire in 
Greek. The contemporaries of Burns were surprised 
that he should visit so many celebrated mountains and 
waterfalls, and not seize the opportunity to make a 
poem. Indeed, it is not for those who have a true 
command of the art of words, but for peddling, pro- 
fessional amateurs, that these pointed occasions are 
most useful and inspiring. As those who speak French 
imperfectly are glad to dwell on any topic they may 
have talked upon or heard others talk upon before, 
because they know appropriate words for it in French, 
so the dabbler in verse rejoices to behold a waterfall, 
because he has learned the sentiment and knows ap- 
propriate words for it in poetry. But the dialect of 
Burns was fitted to deal with any subject ; and whether 
it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a sheep 
struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly sol- 
diers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a drunken 
man, or only a village cockcrow in the morning, he 
could find language to give it freshness, body, and re- 
lief. He was always ready to borrow^ the hint of a 
design, as though he had a difficulty in commencing 
— a difficulty, let us say, in choosing a subject out of 



LofC. 



loo SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

a world which seemed all equally living and signifi- 
cant to him ; but once he had the subject chosen, he 
could cope with nature single-handed, and make every 
stroke a triumph. Again, his absolute mastery in his 
art enabled him to express each and all of his differ- 
ent humors, and to pass smoothly and congruously 
from one to another. Many men invent a dialect for 
only one side of their nature — perhaps their pathos 
or their humor, or the delicacy of their senses — and, 
for lack of a medium, leave all the others unexpressed. 
You meet such an one, and find him in conversation 
full of thought, feeling, and experience, which he has 
lacked the art to employ in his writings. But Burns 
was not thus hampered in the practice of the literary 
art ; he could throw the whole weight of his nature 
into his work, and impregnate it from end to end. If 
Doctor Johnson, that stilted and accomplished stylist, 
had lacked the sacred Boswell, what should we have 
known of him ? and how should we have delighted in 
his acquaintance as we do .? Those who spoke with 
Burns tell us how much we have lost who did not. 
But I think they exaggerate their privilege : I think 
we have the whole Burns in our possession set forth 
in his consummate verses. 

It was by his style, and not by his matter, that he 
affected Wordsworth and the world. There is, in- 
deed, only one merit worth considering in a man of 
letters — that he should write well ; and only one 
damning fault — that he should write ill. We are little 



SOME A SPE CTS OF ROBERT B URNS. i o i 

the better for the reflections of the sailor's parrot in 
the story. And so, if 'Bums helped to change the 
course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct, 
and masterly utterance, and not by his homely choice 
of subjects. That was imposed upon him, not chosen 
upon a principle. He wrote from his own experi- 
ence, because it was his nature so to do, and the tra- 
dition of the school from which he proceeded was for- 
tunately not opposed to homely subjects. But to these 
homely subjects he communicated the rich commen- 
tary of his nature ; they were all steeped in Burns ; 
and they interest us not in themselves, but because 
they have been passed through the spirit of so genuine 
and vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of living lit- 
erature : and there was never any more alive than 
that of Burns. 

What a gust of sympathy there is in him sometimes 
flowing out in byways hitherto unused, upon mice, 
and flowers, and the devil himself ; sometimes speak- 
ing plainly between human hearts ; sometimes ring- 
ing out in exultation like a peal of bells ! When we 
compare the Farmer s Salutation to his Auld Mare 
ATaggie, with the clever and inhumane production of 
half a century earlier. The Auld Man's Mare's dead, 
we see in a nutshell the spirit'of the change introduced 
by Burns. And as to its manner, who that has read 
it can forget how the collie, Luath, in the Twa Dogs, 
describes and enters into the merry-making in the 
cottasre ? 



I02 SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" The luntin' pipe an' sneeshin' mill, 
Are handed round wi' rieht guJd will ; 
The canty auld folks crackin' crouse, 
The young- anes rantin' through the house — 
My heart has been sae fain to see them 
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them." 

It was this ardent power of sympathy that was fatal to 
so many women, and, through Jean Armour, to him- 
self at last. His humor comes from him in a stream 
so deep and easy that I will venture to call him the 
best of humorous poets. He turns about in the midst 
to utter a noble sentiment or a trenchant remark on 
human life, and the style changes and rises to the oc- 
casion. I think it is Principal Shairp who says, hap- 
pily, that Burns would have been no Scotchman if he 
had not loved to moralize ; neither, may we add, 
would he have been his father's son ; but (what is 
worthy of note) his moralizings are to a large extent 
the moral of his own career. He was among the least 
impersonal of artists Except in the Jolly Beggar Sy 
he shows no gleam of dramatic instinct. Mr. Carlyle 
has complained that Tam o' Shanter is, from the ab- 
sence of this quality, only a picturesque and exter- 
nal piece of work ; and I may add that in the Tiva 
Dogs it is precisely in the infringement of dramatic 
propriety that a great deal of the humor of the speeches 
depends for its existence and effect. Indeed, Burns 
was so full of his identity that it breaks forth on every 
page ; and there is scarce an appropriate remark either 
in praise or blame of his own conduct, but he has put 



SOME A SPE CTS OF R OBER T B URNS. 1 03 

it himself into verse. Alas ! for the tenor of these 
remarks ! They are, indeed, his own pitiful apology 
for such a marred existence and talents so misused 
and stunted ; and they seem to prove forever how 
small a part is played by reason in the conduct of 
man's affairs. Here was one, at least, who with un- 
failing judgment predicted his own fate ; yet his 
knowledge could not avail him, and with open eyes 
he must fulfil his tragic destiny. Ten years before the 
end he had written his epitaph ; and neither subse- 
quent events, nor the critical eyes of posterity, have 
shown us a word in it to alter. And, lastly, has he 
not put in for himself the last unanswerable plea .'* — • 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Though they may gang a kennin wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark " 

One .? Alas ! I fear every man and woman of us is 
" greatly dark" to all their neighbors, from the day 
of birth until death removes them, in their greatest 
virtues as well as in their saddest faults ; and we, who 
have been trymg to read the character of Burns, may 
take home the lesson and be gentle in our thoughts. 



WALT WHITMAN. 

Of late years the name of Walt Whitman has been 
a good deal bandied about in books and magazines. 
It has become familiar both in good and ill repute. 
His works have been largely bespattered with praise 
by his admirers, and cruelly mauled and mangled by 
irreverent enemies. Now, whether his poetry is good 
or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit of a dif- 
ference of opinion without alienating those who differ. 
We could not keep the peace with a man who should 
put forward claims to taste and yet depreciate the 
choruses in Samsoii Agonistes ; but, I think, we may 
shake hands with one who sees no more in Walt 
Whitman's volume, from a literary point of view, than 
a farrago of incompetent essays in a wrong direction. 
That may not be at all our own opinion. We may 
think that, when a work contains many unforgettable 
phrases, it cannot be altogether devoid of literary 
merit. We may even see passages of a high poetry 
here and there among its eccentric contents. But 
when all is said, Walt Whitman is neither a Milton 
nor a Shakespeare ; to appreciate his works is not a 
condition necessary to salvation ; and I would not 
disinherit a son upon the question, nor even think 



WALT WHITMAN. 105 

much the worse of a critic, for I should always have 
an idea what he meant. 

What Whitman has to say is another affair from 
how he says it. It is not possible to acquit any one 
of defective intelligence, or else stiff prejudice, who is 
not interested by Whitman's matter and the spirit it 
represents. Not as a poet, but as what we must call 
(for lack of a more exact expression) a prophet, he 
occupies a curious and prominent position. Whether 
he may greatly influence the future or not, he is a 
notable symptom of the present. As a sign of the 
times, it would be hard to find his parallel. I should 
hazard a large wager, for instance, that he was not 
unacquainted with the works of Herbert Spencer ; 
and yet where, in all the history books, shall we lay 
our hands on two more incongruous contemporaries ? 
Mr. Spencer so decorous — I had almost said, so dandy 
— in dissent ; and Whitman, like a large shaggy dog, 
just unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and 
baying at the moon. And when was an echo more 
curiously like a satire, than when Mr. Spencer found 
his Synthetic Philosophy reverberated from the other 
shores of the Atlantic in the " barbaric yawp" of 
Whitman } 



Whitman, it cannot be too soon explained, writes 
up to a system. He was a theorizer about society be- 
fore he was a poet. He first perceived something 
wanting, and then sat down squarely to supply the 



To6 WALT WHITMAN. 

want. The reader, running over his works, will find 
that he takes nearly as much pleasure in critically ex- 
pounding his theory of poetry as in making poems. 
This is as lar as it can be from the case of the spon- 
taneous village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no 
theory whatever, although sometimes he may have 
fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of 
Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A 
man born into a society comparatively new, full of 
conflicting elements and interests, could not fail, if he 
had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies 
around him. He saw much good and evil on all 
sides, not yet settled down into some more or less un- 
just compromise as in older nations, but still in the 
act of settlement. And he could not but wonder 
what it would turn out ; whether the compromise 
would be very just or very much the reverse, and give 
great or little scope for healthy human energies. 
From idle wonder to active speculation is but a step ; 
and he seems to have been early struck with the in- 
efficacy of literature and its extreme unsuitability to 
the conditions. What he calls " Feudal Literature" 
could have little living action on the tumult of Ameri- 
can democracy ; what he calls the *' Literature of 
Wo," meaning the whole tribe of Wertherand Byron, 
could have no action for good in any time or place. 
Both propositions, if art had none but a direct moral 
influence, would be true enough ; and as this seems 
to be Whitman's view, they were true enough for 
him. He conceived the idea of a Literature which 



WALT WHITMAN. 107 

was to inhere in the life of the present ; which was to 
be, first, human, and next, American ; which was to 
be brave and cheerful as per contract ; to give culture 
in a popular and poetical presentment ; and, in so 
doing, catch and stereotype some democratic ideal of 
humanity which should be equally natural to all 
grades of wealth and education, and suited, in one of 
his favorite phrases, to " the average man." To the 
formation of some such literature as this his poems 
are to be regarded as so many contributions, one 
sometimes explaining, sometimes superseding, the 
other : and the whole together not so much a finished 
work as a body of suggestive hints. He does not 
profess to have built the castle, but he pretends he has 
traced the lines of the foundation. He has not made 
the poetry, but he flatters himself he has done some- 
thing toward making the poets. 

His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, and 
coincides roughly with what Schopenhauer has laid 
down as the province of the metaphysician. The 
poet is to gather together for men, and set in order, 
the materials of their existence. He is " The An- 
swerer ;" he is to find some way of speaking aoout 
life that shall satisfy, if only for the moment, man's 
enduring astonishment at his own position. And be- 
sides having an answer ready, it is he who shall pro- 
voke the question. He must shake people out of 
their indifference, and force them to make some elec- 
tion in this world, instead of sliding dully forward in 
a dream. Life is a business we are all apt to mis- 



Io8 WALT WHITMAN. 

manage ; either living recklessly from day to day, OT 
suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our moments 
by the inanities of custom. We should despise a man 
who gave as little activity and forethought to the con- 
duct of any other business. But in this, which is the 
one thing of all others, since it contains them all, we 
cannot see the forest for the trees. One brief impres- 
sion obliterates another. There is something stupe- 
fying in the recurrence of unimportant things. And 
it is only on rare provocations that we can rise to take 
an outlook beyond daily concerns, and comprehend 
the narrow limits and great possibilities of our exist- 
ence. It is the duty of the poet to induce such mo- 
ments of clear sight. He is the declared enemy of all 
living by reflex action, of all that is done betwixt sleep 
and waking, of all the pleasureless pleasurings and 
imaginary duties in which we coin away our hearts 
and fritter invaluable years. He has to electrify his 
readers into an instant unflagging activity, founded 
on a wide and eager observation of the world, and 
make them direct their ways by a superior prudence, 
which has little or nothing in common with the max- 
ims of the copy-book. That many of us lead such 
lives as they would heartily disown after two hours' 
serious reflection on the subject is, I am afraid, a 
true, and, I am sure, a very galling thought. The 
Enchanted Ground of dead-alive respectability is 
next, upon the map, to the Beulah of considerate vir- 
tue. But there they all slumber and take their rest in 
*he middle of God's beautiful and wonderful universe ; 



WALT WHITMAN. 109 

the drowsy heads have nodded together in the same 
position since first their fathers fell asleep ; and not 
even the sound of the last trumpet can wake them to 
a single active thought. The poet has a hard task 
before him to stir up such fellows to a sense of their 
own and other people's principles in life. 

And it happens that literature is, in some wajs, but 
an indifferent means to such an end. Language is 
but a poor bull's-eye lantern wherewith to show off 
the vast cathedral of the world ; and yet a particular 
thing once said in words is so definite and memorable, 
that it makes us forget the absence of the many which 
remain unexpressed ; like a bright window in a dis- 
tant view, which dazzles and confuses our sight of its 
surroundings. There are not words enough in all 
Shakespeare to express the merest fraction of a man's 
experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight 
and the hearing, and the continual industry of the 
mind, produce, in ten niinutes, what it would require 
a laborious volume to shadow forth by comparisons 
and roundabout approaches. If verbal logic were 
sufficient, life would be as plain sailing as a piece of 
Euclid. But, as a matter of fact, we make a travesty 
of the simplest process of thought when we put it into 
words ; for the words are all colored and forsworn, 
apply inaccurately, and bring with them, from former 
uses, ideas of praise and blame that have nothing to 
do with the question in hand. So we must always 
see to it nearly, that we judge by the realities of life 
and not by the partial terms that represent them in 



no WALT WHITMAN. 

man's speech ; and at times of choice, we must leave 
words upon one side, and act upon those brute con- 
victions, unexpressed and perhaps inexpressible, which 
cannot be flourished in an argument, but which are 
truly the sum and fruit of our experience. Words 
are for communication, not for judgment. This is 
what every thoughtful man knows for himself, for only 
fools and silly schoolmasters push definitions over far 
into the domain of conduct ; and the majority of 
women, not learned in these scholastic refinements, 
live all-of-a-piece and unconsciously, as a tree grows, 
without caring to put a name upon their acts or mo- 
tives. Hence, a new difficulty for Whitman's scru- 
pulous and argumentative poet ; he must do more 
than waken up the sleepers to his words ; he must 
persuade them to look over the book and at life with 
their own eyes. 

This side of truth is very present to Whitman ; it is 
this that he means when he tells us that " To glance 
with an eye confounds the learning of all times." 
But he is not unready. He is never weary of descant- 
ing on the undebatable conviction that is forced upon 
our minds by the presence of other men, of animals, 
or of inanimate things. To glance with an eye, were 
it only at a chair or a park railing, is by far a more 
persuasive process, and brings us to a far more exact 
conclusion, than to read the works of all the logicians 
extant. If both, by a large allowance, may be said 
to end in certainty, the certainty in the one case tran- 
scends the other to an incalculable degree. If people 



WALT WHITMAN-. in 

see a lion, they run away ; if they only apprehend a 
deduction, they keep wandering around in an ex- 
perimental humor. Now, how is the poet to convince 
like nature, and not like books ? Is there no actual 
piece of nature that he can show the man to his face, 
as he might show him a tree if they were walking to- 
gether ? Yes, there is one : the man's own thoughts. 
In fact, if the poet is to speak efficaciously, he must 
say what is already in his hearer's mind. That, alone, 
the hearer will believe ; that, alone, he will be able to 
apply intelligently to the facts of life. Any convic- 
tion, even if it be a whole system or a whole religion, 
must pass into the condition of commonplace, or pos- 
tulate, before it becomes fully operative. Strange ex- 
cursions and high-flying theories may interest, but 
they cannot rule behavior. Our faith is not the high- 
est truth that we perceive, but the highest that we 
have been able to assimilate into the very texture and 
method of our thinking. It is not, therefore, b^ 
flashing before a man's eyes the weapons of dialectic ; 
it is not by induction, deduction, or construction ; it 
is not by forcing him on from one stage of reasoning 
to another, that the man will be effectually renewed. 
He cannot be made to believe anything ; but he can 
be made to see that he has always believed it. And 
this is the practical canon. It is when the reader 
cries, " Oh, I know !" and is, perhaps, half irritated 
to see how nearly the author has forestalled his own 
thoughts, that he is on the way to what is called in 
theology a Saving Faith. 



112 WALT WHITMAN. 

Here we have the key to Whitman's attitude. To 
give a certain unity of ideal to the average population 
of America — to gather their activities about some con- 
ception of humanity that shall be central and normal, 
if only for the moment — the poet must portray that 
population as it is. Like hum.an law, human poetry 
is simply declaratory. If any ideal is possible, it 
must be already in the thoughts of the people ; and,, 
by the same reason, in the thoughts of the poet, who 
is one of them. And hence Whitman's own formula : 
" The poet is individual — he is complete in himself : 
the others are as good as he ; only he sees it, and 
they do not." To show them how good they are, 
the poet must study his fellow-countrymen and him- 
self somewhat like a traveller on the hunt for his book 
of travels. There is a sense, of course, in which all 
true books are books of travel ; and all genuine poets 
must run their risk of being charged with the travel- 
ler's exaggeration ; for to whom are such books more 
surprising than to those whose own life is faithfully 
and smartly pictured ? But this danger is all upon 
one side ; and you may judiciously flatter the portrait 
without any likelihood of the sitter's disowning it for 
a faithful likeness. And so Whitman has reasoned : 
that by drawing at first hand from himself and his neigh- 
bors, accepting without shame the inconsistencies and 
brutalities that go to make up man, and yet treating 
the whole in a high, magnanimous spirit, he would 
make sure of belief, and at the same time encourage 
people for^vard by the means of praise. 



WALT WHITMAN. 113 

II. 

We are accustomed nowadays to a great deal of 
puling over the circumstances in which we are placed. 
The great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has 
rendered them practically unfit for the jostling and 
ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at con- 
siderable length. The bold and awful poetry of Job's 
complaint produces too many flimsy imitators ; for 
there is always something consolatory in grandeur, but 
the symphony transposed for the piano becomes hys- 
terically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman 
calls it, this Maladie de Rene, as we hke to call it in 
Europe, is in many ways a most humiliating and 
sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen with three or 
four hundred a year of private means look down from 
a pinnacle of doleful experience on all the grown and 
hearty men who have dared to say a good word for 
life since the beginning of the world. There is no 
prophet but the melancholy Jacques, and the blue 
devils dance on all our literary wires. 

It would be a poor service to spread culture, if this 
be its result, among the comparatively innocent and 
cheerful ranks of men. When our little poets have 
to be sent to look at the ploughman and learn wis- 
dom, we must be careful how we tamper wath our 
ploughmen. Where a man in not the best of cir- 
cumstances preserves composure of mind, and relishes 
ale and tobacco, and his wife and children, in the in- 
tervals of dull and unremunerative labor ; where a 



114 WALT WHITMAN. 

man in this predicament can afford a lesson bj the 
way to what are called his intellectual superiors, there 
is plainly something to be lost, as well as something 
to be gained, by teaching him to think differently. It 
is better to leave him as he is than to teach him whin- 
ing. It is better that he should go without the cheer- 
ful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and paralyzing 
sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us, 
by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of 
sensation and sluggishness of mind which blurs and 
decolorizes for poor natures the wonderful pageant of 
consciousness ; let us teach people, as much as we 
can, to enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to 
sympathize ; but let us see to it, above all, that we 
give these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, and build 
the man up in courage while we demolish its substi- 
tute, indifference. 

Whitman is alive to all this. He sees that, if the 
poet is to be of any help, he must testify to the liv- 
ableness of life. His poems, he tells us, are to be 
" hymns of the praise of things." They are to make 
for a certain high joy in living, or what he calls him- 
self " a brave delight fit for freedom's athletes." And 
he has had no difficulty in introducing his optimism : 
it fitted readily enough with his system ; for the aver- 
age man is truly a courageous person and truly fond 
of living. One of Whitman's remarks upon this head 
is worth quotation, as he is there perfectly successful, 
and does precisely what he designs to do throughout : 
Takes ordinary and even commonplace circumstances ; 



WALT IV HITMAN. 115 

throws them out, by a happy turn of thinking, into 
significance and something hke beauty ; and tacks a 
hopeful moral lesson to the end. 

"The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early- 
risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, he 
says, the love of healthy women for the manly form, sea- 
faring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and 
the open air, — all is an old unvaried sign of the unfailing 
perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in 
outdoor people." 

There seems to me something truly original in 
this choice of trite examples. You will remark how 
adroitly Whitman begins, hunters and woodmen being 
confessedly romantic. And one thing more. If he 
had said " the love of healthy men for the female 
form," he wonld have said almost a silliness ; for the 
thing has never been dissembled out of delicacy, and 
is so obvious as to be a public nuisance. But by re- 
versing it, he tells us something not unlike news ; 
something that sounds quite freshly in words ; and, if 
the reader be a man, gives him a moment of great self- 
satisfaction and spiritual aggrandizement. In many 
different authors you may find passages more remark- 
able for grammar, but few of a more ingenious turn, 
and none that could be more to the point in our con- 
nection. The tenacity of many ordinary people in 
ordinary pursuits is a sort of standing challenge to 
everybody else. If one man can grow absorbed in 
delving his garden, others may grow absorbed and 
happy over something else. Not to be upsides in 



Il6 WALT WHITMAN. 

this with any groom or gardener, is to be very meanly 
organized. A man should be ashamed to take his 
food if he has not alchemy enough in his stomach to 
turn some of it into intense and enjoyable occupation. 
Whitman tries to reinforce this cheerfulness by keep- 
ing up a sort of outdoor atmosphere of sentiment. 
His book, he tells us, should be read " among the 
cooling influences of external nature ;" and this rec- 
ommendation, like that other famous one which Haw- 
thorne prefixed to his collected tales, is in itself a 
character of the work. Every one who has been upon 
a walking or a boating tour, living in the open air, 
with the body in constant exercise and the mind in 
fallow, knows true ease and quiet. The irritating 
action of the brain is set at rest ; we think in a plain, 
unfeverish temper ; little things seem big enough, and 
great things no longer portentous ; and the world is 
smilingly accepted as it is. This is the spirit that 
Whitman inculcates and parades. ) He thinks very ill 
of the atmosphere of parlors or libraries. Wisdom 
keeps school outdoors. And he has the art to recom- 
mend this attitude of mind by simply pluming himself 
upon it as a virtue ; so that the reader, to keep the 
advantage over his author which most readers enjoy, 
is tricked into professing the same view. And this 
spirit, as it is his chief lesson, is the greatest charm of 
his work. Thence, in spite of an uneven and em- 
phatic key of expression, something trenchant and 
straightforward, something simple and surprising, dis- 
tinguishes his poems. He has sayings that come home 



WALT IVHITMAAr. 



117 



to one like the Bible. We fall upon Whitman, after 
the works of so many men who write better, with a 
sense of relief from strain, with a sense of touchirfg 
nature, as when one passes out of the flaring, noisy 
thoroughfares of a great city into what he himself has 
called, with unexcelled imaginative justice of language, 
** the huge and thoughtful night. " And his book in 
consequence, whatever may be the final judgment of 
its merit, whatever may be its influence on the future, 
should be in the hands of all parents and guardians as 
a specific for the distressing malady of being seventeen 
years old. Green-sickness yields to his treatment as 
to a charm of magic ; and the youth, after a short 
course of reading, ceases to carry the universe upon 
his shoulders. 

IIL 

Whitman is not one of those who can be deceived 
by familiarity. He considers it just as wonderful that 
there are myriads of stars, as that one man should rise 
from the dead. He declares ' ' a hair on the back of 
his hand just as curious as any special revelation." 
His whole life is to him what it was to Sir Thomas 
Browne, one perpetual miracle. Everything is strange, 
everything unaccountable, everything beautiful ; from 
a bug to the moon, from the sight of the eyes to the 
appetite for food. He makes it his business to see 
things as if he saw them for the first time, and pro- 
fesses astonishment on principle. But he has no lean- 
ing toward mythology ; avows his contempt for what 



Ii8 WALT WHITMAN. 

he calls *' unregenerate poetry ;" and does not mean 
by nature 

"The smooth walks, trimmed hedges, butterflies, posies, 
and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, 
with its geologic history, the Kosmos, carrying fire and snow, 
that rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather 
though weighing billions of tons." 

Nor is this exhaustive ; for in his character of ideal- 
ist all impressions, all thoughts, trees and people, love 
and faith, astronomy, history, and religion, enter upon 
equal terms into his notion of the universe. He is not 
against religion ; not, indeed, against any religion. 
He wishes to drag with a larger net, to make a more 
comprehensive synthesis, than any or than all of them 
put together. In feeling after the central type of man, 
he must embrace all eccentricities ; his cosmology 
must subsume all cosmologies, and the feelings that 
gave birth to them ; his statement of facts must in- 
clude all religion and all irreligion, Christ and Boodha, 
God and the devil. The world as it is, and the whole 
world as it is, physical, and spiritual, and historical, 
with its good and bad, with its manifold inconsisten- 
cies, is what he wishes to set forth, in strong, pictu- 
resque, and popular lineaments, for the understanding 
of the average man. One of his favorite endeavors 
is to get the whole matter into a nutshell ; to knock 
the four corners of the universe, one after another, 
about his readers' ears ; to hurry him, in breathless 
phrases, hither and thither, back and forward, in time 
and space ; to focus all this about his own momentary 



WALT WHITMAN. 119 

personality ; and then, drawing the ground from 
under his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to 
plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with 
enormous suns and systems, and among the incon- 
ceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the 
heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking 
into us some sense of that disproportion of things 
which Shelley has illuminated by the ironical flash of 
these eight words : The desire of the moth for the star. 
The same truth, but to what a different purpose ! 
Whitman's moth is mightily at his ease about all 
the planets in heaven, and cannot think too highly of 
our sublunary tapers. The universe is so large that 
imagination flags in the effort to conceive it ; but 
here, in the meantime, is the world under our feet, a 
ver}' warm and habitable corner. ' ' The earth, that 
is sufficient ; I do not want the constellations any 
nearer," he remarks. And again : " Let your soul 
stand cool and composed," says he, " before a million 
universes." It is the language of a transcendental 
common sense, such as Thoreau held and sometimes 
uttered. But Whitman, who has a somewhat vulgar 
inclination for technical talk and the jargon of philoso- 
phy, is not content with a few pregnant hints ; he 
must put the dots upon his i's ; he must corroborate 
the songs of Apollo by some of the darkest talk of hu- 
man metaphysic. He tells his disciples that they must 
be ready " to confront the growing arrogance of Real- 
ism." Each person is, for himself, the keystone and 
the occasion of this universal edifice. " Nothing, not 



I20 WALT WHITMAN. 

God, " he says, " is greater to one than oneself is ;" a 
statement with an irreligious smack at the first sight ; 
but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on a 
second. He will give effect to his own character with- 
out apology ; he sees " that the elementary laws never 
apologize." " I reckon," he adds, with quaint col- 
loquial arrogance, " I reckon I behave no prouder 
than the level I plant my house by, after all." The 
level follows the law^ of its being ; so, unrelentingly, 
will he ; everything, every person, is good in his own 
place and way ; God is the maker of all, and all are 
in one design. For he believes in God, and that with 
a sort of blasphemous security. ' ' No array of terms, ' ' 
quoth he, '* no array of terms can say how much at 
peace I am about God and about death." There cer- 
tainly never was a prophet who carried things with a 
higher hand ; he gives us less a body of dogmas than 
a series of proclamations by the grace of God ; and 
language, you will observe, positively fails him to ex- 
press how far he stands above the highest human 
doubts and trepidations. 

But next in order of truths to a person's sublime 
conviction of himself, comes the attraction of one per- 
son for another, and all that we mean by the word 
love : — 

" The dear love of man for his comrade — the attraction of 

friend for friend, 
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and 

parents, 
Of city for city and land for land." 



WALT WHITMAN. 121 

The solitude of the most subHme ideaHst is broken 
in upon by other people's faces ; he sees a look in 
ihtir eyes that corresponds to something in his own 
lieait ; there comes a tone in their voices which con- 
victs him of a startling weakness for his fellow- 
creatures. While he is hymning the ego and com- 
mercing with God and the universe, a woman goes 
below his window ; and at the turn of her skirt or the 
color of her eyes, Icarus is recalled from heaven by the 
run. Love is so startlingly real that it takes rank upon 
an equal footing of reality with the consciousness of 
personal existence. We are as heartily persuaded of 
the identity of those we love as of our own identity. 
And so sympathy pairs with self-assertion, the two 
gerents of human life on earth ; and Whitman's ideal 
man must not only be strong, free, and self-reliant in 
himself, but his freedom must be bounded and his 
strength perfected by the most intimate, eager, and 
long-suffenng love for others. To some extent this is 
takmg away with the left hand what has been so gen- 
erously given with the right. Morality has been cere- 
moniously extruded from the door only to be brought 
in again by the window. We are told, on one page, 
to do as we please ; and on the next w^e are sharply 
upbraided for not having done as the author pleases. 
We are first assured that we are the finest fellows in 
the world in our own right ; and then it appears that 
we are only fine fellows in so far as we practise a most 
quixotic code of morals. The disciple who saw him- 
self in clear ether a moment before is plunged down 



122 WALT WHITMAN. 

again among the fogs and complications of duty. And 
this is all the more overwhelming because Whitman 
insists not only on love between sex and sex, and be- 
tween friends of the same sex, but in the field of the 
less intense political sympathies ; and his ideal man 
must not only be a generous friend but a conscien- 
tious voter into the bargain. 

His method somewhat lessens the difficulty. He 
is not, the reader will remember, to tell us how good 
we ought to be, but to remind us how good we are. 
He is to encourage us to be free and kind, by proving 
that we are free and kind already. He passes our cor- 
porate life under review, to show that it is upheld by 
the very virtues of which he makes himself the advo- 
cate. "There is no object so soft," he says some- 
where in his big, plain way, "there is no object so 
soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe." 
Rightly understood, it is on the softest of all objects, 
the sympathetic heart, that the wheel of society turns 
easily and securely as on a perfect axle. There is no 
room, of course, for doubt or discussion, about con- 
duct, where every one is to follow the law of his being 
with exact compliance. Whitman hates doubt, depre- 
cates discussion, and discourages to his utmost the 
craving, carping sensibilities of the conscience. We 
are to imitate, to use one of his absurd and happy 
phrases, " the satisfaction and aplomb of animals." 
If he preaches a sort of ranting Christianity in morals, 
a fit consequent to the ranting optimism of his cos- 
mology, it is because he declares it to be the original 



WALT WHITMAN. 123 

deliverance of the human heart ; or at least, for he 
would be honestly historical in method, of the human 
heart as at present Christianized. His is a morality 
without a prohibition ; his policy is one of encourage- 
ment all round. A man must be a born hero to 
come up to Whitman's standard in the practice of any 
of the positive virtues ; but of a negative virtue, such 
as temperance or chastity, he has so little to say, that 
the reader need not be surprised if he drops a word or 
two upon the other side. He would lay down noth- 
ing that would be a clog ; he would prescribe nothing 
that cannot be done ruddily, in a heat. The great 
point is to get people under way. To the faithful 
Whitmanite this would be justified by the belief that 
God made all, and that all was good ; the prophet, in 
this doctrine, has only to cry " Tally-ho," and man- 
kind will break into a gallop on the road to El Dorado. 
Perhaps, to another class of minds, it may look like 
the result of the somewhat cynical reflection that you 
will not make a kind man out of one who is unkind 
by any precepts under heaven ; tempered by the belief 
that, in natural circumstances, the large majority is well 
disposed. Thence it would follow, that if you can 
only get every one to feel more warmly and act more 
courageously, the balance of results will be for good. 

So far, you see, the doctrine is pretty coherent as a 
doctrine ; as a picture of man's life it is incomplete 
and misleading, although eminently cheerful. This 
he is himself the first to acknowledge ; for if he is 
prophetic in anything, it is in his noble disregard of 



124 WALT WHITMAN. 

consistency. "Do I contradict myself?" he asks 
somewhere ; and then pat comes the answer, the best 
answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or rather 
of a woman : " Very well, then, 1 contradict myself !" 
with this addition, not so feminine and perhaps not 
■altogether so satisfactory : " I am large— I contain 
multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes 
largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel accord- 
ing to Whitman, even if it be not so logical, has this 
advantage over the gospel according to Pangloss, that 
it does not utterly disregard the existence of temporal 
evil. Whitman accepts the fact of disease and wretch- 
edness like an honest man ; and instead of trying to 
qualify it in the interest of his optimism, sets himself 
to spur people up to be helpful. He expresses a con- 
viction, indeed, that all will be made up to the victims 
in the end ; that " what is untried and afterward" 
will fail no one, not even ' ' the old man who has lived 
without purpose and feels it with bitterness worse than 
gall." But this is not to palliate our sense of what is 
hard or melancholy in the present. Pangloss, smart- 
ing under one of the worst things that ever was sup- 
posed to come from America, consoled himself with 
the reflection that it was the price we have to pay for 
cochineal. And with that murderous parody, logical 
optimism and the praises of the best of possible words 
went irrevocably out of season, and have been no 
more heard of in the mouths of reasonable men. 
Whitman spares us all allusions to the cochineal ; he 
treats evil and sorrow in a spirit almost as of welcome ; 



WALT WHITMAN. 125 

as an old sea-dog might have welcomed the sight of 
the enemy's topsails off the Spanish Main. There, at 
least, he seems to say, is something obvious to be 
done. I do not know many better things in literature 
than the brief pictures, — brief and vivid like things 
seen by lightning, — with which he tries to stir up the 
world's heart upon the side of mercy. He braces u^, 
on the one hand, with examples of heroic duty and 
helpfulness ; on the other, he touches us with pitiful 
instances of people needing help. He knows how to 
make the heart beat at a brave story ; to inflame us 
with just resentment over the hunted slave ; to stop 
our mouths for shame when he tells of the drunken 
prostitute. For all the afflicted, all the weak, all the 
wicked, a good word is said in a spirit which I can 
only call one of ultra-Christianity ; and however wild, 
however contradictory, it may be in parts, this at least 
may be said for his book, as it may be said of the 
Christian Gospels, that no one will read it, however 
respectable, but he gets a knock upon his con- 
science ; no one, however fallen, but he finds a kindly 
and supporting welcome. 

IV. 

Nor has he been content with merely blowing the 
trumpet for the battle of well-doing ; he has given to 
his precepts the authority of his own brave example. 
Naturally a grave, believing man, with little or no 
sense of humor, he has succeeded as well in life as in 



126 WALT WHITMAN'. 

his printed performances. The spirit that was in him 
has come forth most eloquently in his actions. Many 
who have only read his poetry have been tempted to 
set him down as an ass, or even as a charlatan ; but I 
never met any one who had known him personally 
who did not profess a solid affection and respect for 
the man's character. He practises as he professes ; 
he feels deeply that Christian love for all men, that 
toleration, that cheerful delight in serving others, 
which he often celebrates in literature with a doubtful 
measure of success. And perhaps, out of all his 
writings, the best and the most human and convincing 
passages are to be found in " these soil'd and creas'd 
little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of 
paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fast- 
ened with a pin," which he scribbled during the war 
by the bedsides of the wounded or in the excitement 
of great events. They are hardly literature in the 
formal meaning of the word ; he has left his jottings 
for the most part as he made them ; a homely detail, 
a word from the lips of a dying soldier, a business 
memorandum, the copy of a letter — short, straight- 
forward to the point, with none of the trappings of 
composition ; but they breathe a profound sentiment, 
they give us a vivid look at one of the sides of life, 
and they make us acquainted with a man whom it is 
an honor to love. 

Whitman's intense Americanism, his unlimited be- 
lief in the future of These States (as, with reverential 



WALT WHITMAN. 127 

capitals, he loves to call them), made the war a period 
of great trial to his soul. The new virtue, Unionism, 
of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fall- 
en into premature unpopularity. All that he loved, 
hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. A.nd the game 
of war was not only momentous to him in its issues ; 
it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tor- 
tured him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. 
It was a theatre, it was a place of education, it was 
like a season of religious revival. He watched Lin- 
coln going daily to his work ; he studied and frater- 
nized with young soldiery passing to the front ; above 
all, he walked the hospitals, readino^ the Bible, dis- 
tributing clean clothes, or apples, or tobacco ; a pa- 
tient, helpful, reverend man, full of kind speeches. 

His memoranda of this period are almost bewilder- 
ing to read. From one point of view they seem those 
of a district visitor ; from another, they look like the 
formless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More 
than one woman, on whom I tried the experiment, 
immediately claimed the writer for a fellow-woman. 
More than one literary purist might identify him as a 
shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary 
faculty of style. And yet the story touches home ; 
and if you are of the weeping order of mankind, you 
will certainly find your eyes fill with tears, of which 
you have no reason to be ashamed. There is only 
one way to characterize a work of this order, and that 
is to quote. Here is a passage from a letter to a 



128 WALT WHITMAN. 

mother, unknown to Whitman, whose son died in 
hospital : — 

" Frank, as far as I saw, had everything requisite in sur- 
gical treatment, nursing, etc. He had watches much of the 
time. He was so good and well-behaved, and affectionate, 
I myself liked him very much. I was in the habit of com- 
ing in afternoons and sitting by him, and he liked to have 
me — liked to put out his arm and lay his hand on my knee — 
would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was 
more restless and flighty at night — often fancied himself 
with his regiment — by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his 
feelings were hurt by being blamed by his ofBcers for some- 
thing he was entirely innocent of — said ' I never in my life 
was thought capable of such a thing, and never was.' At 
other times he would fancy himself talking as it seem'd to 
children or such like, his relatives, I suppose, and giving 
them good advice ; would talk to them a long while. All 
the time he was out of his head not one single bad word, or 
thought, or idea escaped him. It was remark'd that many 
a man's conversation in his senses was not half so good as 
Frank's delirium. 

" He was perfectly willing to die — he had become very 
weak, and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly re- 
sign' d, poor boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as 
if it must have been good. At any rate what I saw of him 
here, under the most trying circumstances, with a painful 
wound, and among strangers, I can say that he behaved so 
brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could 
not be surpassed. And now, like many other noble and 
good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded 
up his young life at the very outset in herservice. Such things 
are gloomy — yet there is a text, ' God doeth all things well,' 
the meaning of which, after due time, appears to the soul. 

" I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger, 
about your son, from one who was with him at the last, 



WALT- WHITMAN. 129 

might be worth while, for I loved the young man, though I 
but saw him immediately to lose him." 

It is easy enough to pick holes in the grammar of 
this letter, but what are we to say of its profound good- 
ness and tenderness ? It is written as though he had 
the mother's face before his eyes, and saw her wincing 
in the flesh at every word. And what, again, are we 
to say of its sober truthfulness, not exaggerating, not 
running to phrases, not seeking to make a hero out 
of what was only an ordinary but good and brave 
young man ? Literary reticence is not Whitman's 
stronghold ; and this reticence is not literary, but 
humane ; it is not that of a good artist but that of a 
good man. He knew that w^hat the mother wished to 
hear about w^as Frank ; and he told her about her 
Frank as he was. 

V. 

Something should be said of Whitman's style, for 
style is of the essence of thinking. And where a man 
is so critically deliberate as our author, and goes 
solemnly about his poetry for an ulterior end, every 
indication is worth notice. : He has chosen a rough, 
unrhymed, lyrical verse ; sometimes instinct with a 
fine processional movement ; often so rugged and 
careless that it can only be described by saying that he 
has not taken the trouble to write prose. I believe 
myself that it was selected principally because it was 
easy to write, although not without recollections of 
the marching measures of some of the prose in our 



130 WALT IV HITMAN. 

English Old Testament. According to Whitman, on 
the other hand, " the time has arrived to essentially 
break down the barriers of form between Prose and 
Poetry ... for the most cogent purposes of those 
great inland states, and for Texas, and California, and 
Oregon ;" — a statement which is among the happiest 
achievements of American humor. He calls his 
verses " lecitatives," in easily followed allusion to 
a musical form. " Easily-written, loose-fingered 
chords," he cries, " I feel the thrum of your climax 
and close." Too often, I fear, he is the only one who 
can perceive the rhythm ; and in spite of Mr. Swin- 
burne, a great part of his work considered as verse is 
poor bald stuff. Considered, not as verse, but as 
speech, a great part of it is full of strange and admir- 
able merits. The right detail is seized ; the right 
word, bold and trenchant, is thrust into its place. 
Whitman has small regard to literary decencies, and 
is totally free from literary timidities. He is neither 
afraid of being slangy nor of being dull ; nor, let me 
add, of being ridiculous. The result is a most sur- 
prising compound of plain grandeur, sentimental 
affectation, and downright nonsense. It would be 
useless to follow his detractors and give instances of 
how bad he can be at his worst ; and perhaps it would 
be not much wiser to give extracted specimens of how 
happily he can write when he is at his best. These 
come in to most advantage in their own place ; owing 
something, it may be, to the offset of their curious 
surroundings. And one thing is certain, that no one 



WALT WHITMAN. 131 

can appreciate Whitman's excellences until he has 
grown accustomed to his faults. Until you are con- 
tent to pick poetry out of his pages almost as you 
must pick it out of a Greek play in Bohn's transla- 
tion, your gravity will be continually upset, your ears 
perpetually disappointed, and the whole book will be 
no more to you than a particularly flagrant production 
by the Poet Close. 

A writer of this uncertain quality was, perhaps, un- 
fortunate in taking for thesis the beauty of the world 
as it now is. not only on the hill-tops, but in the fac- 
tory ; not only by the harbor full of stately ships, but 
in the magazine of the hopelessly prosaic hatter. To 
show beauty in common things is the work of the rar- 
est tact. It is not to be done by the wishing. It is 
easy to posit as a theory, but to bring it home to 
men's minds is the problem of literature, and is only 
accomplished by rare talent, and in comparatively rare 
instances. To bid the whole world stand and deliver, 
with a dogma in one's right hand by way of pistol ; 
to cover reams of paper in a galloping, headstrong 
vein ; to cry louder and louder over everything as it 
comes up, and make no distinction in one's enthusi- 
asm over the most incomparable matters ; to prove 
one's entire want of sympathy for the jaded, literary 
palate, by calling, not a spade a spade, but a hatter a 
hatter, in a lyrical apostrophe ; — this, in spite of all 
the airs of inspiration, is not the way to do it. It may 
be very wrong, and very v;ounding to a respectable 
branch of indusirr, but the word "hatter" cannot 



132 WALT WHITMAN. 

be used seriously in emotional verse ; not to under- 
stand this, is to have no literary tact ; and I would, 
for his own sake, that this were the only inadmissible 
expression with which Whitman had bedecked his 
pages. The book teems with similar comicalities ; 
and, to a reader who is determined to take it from 
that side only, presents a perfect carnival of fun. 

A good deal of this is the result of theory playing 
its usual vile trick upon the artist. It is because he is 
a Democrat that Whitman must have in the hatter. 
If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you 
not say Hatter ? One man is as good as another, and 
it is the business of the " great poet" to show poetry 
in the life of the one as well as the other. A most 
incontrovertible sentiment surely, and one which no- 
body would think of controverting, where — and here 
is the point — where any beauty has been shown. But 
how, where that is not the case ? where the hatter is 
simply introduced, as God made him and as his fel- 
low-men have miscalled him, at the crisis of a high- 
flown rhapsody .? And what are we to say, where a 
man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things 
in a bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives 
up the attempt, and indulges, with apparent exulta- 
tion, in an inventory of trades or implements, with no 
more color or coherence than so many index-words 
out of a dictionary ? I do not know that we can say 
anything, but that it is a prodigiously amusing exhi- 
bition for a line or so. The worst of it is, that Whit- 
man must have known better. The man is a great 



WALT WHITMAN. 133 

critic, and, sc? far as I can make out, a good one ; 
and how much criticism does it require to know that 
capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a 
dumb keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and 
execution, is not at all the same thing as discoursing 
music ? I wish I could believe he was quite honest 
with us ; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who 
wrote a book for a purpose ? It is a flight beyond the 
reach of human magnanimity. 

One other point, where his means failed him, must 
be touched upon, however shortly. In his desire to 
accept all facts loyally and simply, it fell within his 
programme to speak at some length and with some 
plainness on what is, for I really do not know what 
reason, the most delicate of subjects. Seeing in that 
one of the most serious and interesting parts of life, he 
was aggrieved that it should be looked upon as ridicu- 
lous or shameful. No one speaks of maternity with 
his tongue in his cheek ; and Whitman made a bold 
push to set the sanctity of fatherhood beside the 
sanctity of motherhood, and introduce this also among 
the things that can be spoken of without either a blush 
or a wink. But the Philistines have been too strong ; 
and, to say truth. Whitman has rather played the fool. 
We may be thoroughly conscious that his end is im- 
proving ; that it would be a good thing if a window 
were opened on these close privacies of life ; that on 
this subject, as on all others, he now and then lets fall 
a pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel 
that he u'as not the man for so difficult an enterprise. 



134 WALT WHITMAN, 

He loses our sympathy in the character of a poet by 
attracting too much of our attention in that of a Bull 
in a China Shop. And where, by a little more art, 
we might have been solemnized ourselves, it is too 
often Whitman alone who is solemn in the face of an 
audience somewhat indecorously amused. 

VI. 

Lastly, as most important, after all, to human be- 
ings in our disputable state, what is that higher pru- 
dence which was to be the aim and issue of these delib- 
erate productions ? 

Whitman is too clever to slip into a succinct for- 
mula. If he could have adequately said his say in a 
single proverb, it is to be presumed he would not have 
put himself to the trouble of writing several volumes. 
It was his programme to state as much as he could of 
the world with all its contradictions, and leave the up- 
shot with God who planned it. What he has made 
of the world and the world's meanings is to be 
found at large in his poems. These altogether give 
his answers to the problems of belief and conduct ; in 
many ways righteous and high-spirited, in some ways 
loose and contradictory. And yet there are two pas- 
sages from the preface to the Leaves of Grass which 
do pretty well condense his teaching on all essential 
points, and yet preserve a measure of his spirit. 

"This is what you shall do," he says in the one, "love 
the earth, and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to 



WALT WHITMAN. 135 

every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, de- 
vote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue 
not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward 
the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, 
or to any man or number of men ; go freely with powerful 
uneducated persons, and Avith the young, and mothers of 
families, read these leaves (his own works) in the open air 
every season of every year of your life ; re-examine all you 
have been told at school or church, or in any book, and dis- 
miss whatever insults your own soul." 

" The prudence of the greatest poet," he adds in the other 
— and the greatest poet is, of course, himself — " knows that 
the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it, 
has done exceeding well for himself ; while the man who 
has not perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches 
and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth 
mentioning ; and that only that person has no great pru- 
dence to learn, who has learnt to prefer real long-lived 
things, and favors body and soul the same, and perceives 
the indirect surely following the direct, and what evil or 
good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him 
again, and who in his spirit, in any emergency whatever, 
neither hurries nor avoids death." 

There is much that is Christian in these extracts, 
startlingly Christian, Any reader who bears in mind 
Whitman's own advice and " dismisses whatever in- 
sults his own soul " will find plenty that is bracing, 
brightening, and chastening to reward him for a little 
patience at first. It seems hardly possible that any 
being should get evil from so healthy a book as the 
Leaves of Grass, which is simply comical wherever it 
falls short of nobility ; but if there be any such, who 



136 WALT WHITMAN. 

cannot both take and leave, who cannot let a single 
opportunity pass by without some unworthy and un- 
manly thought, I should have as great difficulty, and 
neither more nor less, in recommending the works of 
Whitman as in lending them Shakespeare, or letting 
them go abroad outside of the grounds of a private 
asylum. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU : 
HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 

I. 

Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even 
in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations 
of his mind and character. With his almost acid 
sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity 
in act, there went none of that large, unconscious 
geniality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not 
ample, not urbane, not even kind ; his enjoyment was 
hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to 
be convincing ; he had no waste lands nor kitchen- 
midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharp- 
ened to a point. " He was bred to no profession," 
says Emerson ; " he never married ; he lived alone ; 
he never went to church ; he never voted ; he refused 
to pay a tax to the State ; he ate no flesh, he drank no 
wine, he never knew the use of tobacco ; and, though 
a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. When 
asked at dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, 
* the nearest' " So many negative superiorities begin 
to smack a little of the prig. From his later works he 
was in the habit of cutting out the humorous passages. 



1 38 HENR V DA VID T MORE A U : 

under the impression that they were beneath the dig- 
nity of his moral muse ; and there we see the prig 
stand public and confessed. It was " much easier," 
says Emerson acutely, much easier for Thoreau to say 
720 ihanyes ; and that is a characteristic which depicts 
the man. It is a useful accomplishment to be able to 
say 710, but surely it is the essence of amiability to 
prefer to say j'es where it is possible. There is some- 
thing wanting in the man who does not hate himself 
whenever he is constrained to say no. And there was 
a great deal wanting in this born dissenter. He was 
almost shockingly devoid of weaknesses ; he had not 
enough of them to be truly polar with humanity ; 
whether you call him demi-god or demi-man, he was 
at least not altogether one of us, for he was not touched 
with a feeling of our infirmities. The world's heroes 
have room for all positive qualities, even those which 
are disreputable, in the capacious theatre of their dis- 
positions. Such can live many lives ; while a Thoreau 
can live but one, and that only with perpetual fore- 
sight. 

He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the nobler 
sort ; and he had this one great merit, that he suc- 
ceeded so far as to be happy. " I love my fate to the 
core and rind," he wrote once ; and even while he 
lay dying, here is what he dictated (for it seems he was 
already too feeble to control the pen) : " You ask 
particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not 
many months to live, but of course know nothing 
about it. I may say that I am enjoying existence as 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 139 

much as ever, and regret nothing." It is not given 
to all to bear so clear a testimony to the sweetness of 
their fate, nor to any without courage and wisdom ; 
for this world in itself is but a painful and uneasy 
place of residence, and lasting happiness, at least to 
the self-conscious, comes only from within. Now 
Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may 
say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with 
womanish solicitude ; for there is apt to be something 
unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that 
does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears 
the bracing contact of the world. In one word, 
Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go 
out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a 
corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake 
of certain virtuous self-indulgences. It is true that his 
tastes were noble ; that his ruling passion was to keep 
himself unspotted from the world ; and that his luxu- 
ries v/ere all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and 
early rising. But a man may be both coldly cruel in 
the pursuit of goodness, and morbid even in the pur- 
suit of health. I cannot lay my hands on the passage 
in which he explains his abstinence from tea and 
coffee, but I am sure I have the meaning correctly. 
It is this : He thought it bad economy and worthy of 
no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of the 
morning with such muddy stimulants ; let him but see 
the sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited 
for the labors of the day. That may be reason good 
enough to abstain from tea ; but when we go on to 



I40 HENR V DA VID THOREA U 

find the same man, on the same or similar grounds, 
abstain from nearly everything that his neighbors in- 
nocently and pleasurably use, and from the rubs and 
trials of human society itself into the bargain, we rec- 
ognize that valetudinarian healthfulness which is more 
delicate than sickness itself We need have no re- 
spect for a state of artificial training. True health is 
to be able to do without it. Shakespeare, we can 
imagine, might begin the day upon a quart of ale, 
and yet enjoy the sunrise to the full as much as 
Thoreau, and commemorate his enjoyment in vastly 
better verses. A man who must separate himself from 
his neighbors' habits in order to be happy, is in much 
the same case with one who requires to take opium for 
the same purpose. What we want to see is one who 
can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still 
preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence. 

Thoreau' s faculties were of a piece with his moral 
shyness ; for they were all delicacies. He could guide 
himself about the woods on the darkest night by the 
touch of his feet. He could pick up at once an exact 
dozen of pencils by the feeling, pace distances with 
accuracy, and gauge cubic contents by the eye. His 
smell was so dainty that he could perceive the foetor of 
dweliing-houses as he passed them by at night ; his 
palate so unsophisticated that, like a child, he disliked 
the taste of wine — or perhaps, living in America, had 
never tasted any that was good ; and his knowledge 
of nature was so complete and curious that he could 
have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 141 

aspect of the plants. In his deahngs with animals, he 
was the original of Hawihorne's Donatello. He pulled 
the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail ; the hunted 
fox came to him for protection ; wild squirrels have 
been seen to nestle in his waistcoat ; he would thrust 
his arm into a pool and bring forth a bright, panting 
fish, lying undismayed in the palm of his hand. 
There were few things that he could not do. He 
could make a house, a boat, a pencil, or a book. 
He was a surveyor, a scholar, a natural historian. 
He could run, walk, climb, skate, swim, and manage 
a boat. The smallest occasion served to display his 
physical accomplishment ; and a manufacturer, from 
merely observing his dexterity with the window of a 
railway carriage, offered him a situation on the spot. 
"The only fruit of much living," he observes, "is 
the ability to do some slight thing better." But such 
was the exactitude of his senses, so alive was he in 
every fibre, that it seems as if the maxim should be 
changed in his case, for he could do most things with 
unusual perfection. And perhaps he had an approv- 
ing eye to himself when he wrote : " Though the 
youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the uni- 
verse are not indifferent, but are forever on the side 
of the most sensitive.'' 

H. 

Thoreau had decided, it would seem, from the very 
first to lead a life of self-improvement : the needle did 
not tremble as with richer natures, but pointed stead- 



142 HENRY DAVID THOREAU : 

ily north ; and as he saw duty and inclination in one, 
he turned all his strength in that direction. He was 
met upon the threshold by a common difficulty. In 
this world, in spite of its many agreeable features, 
even the most sensitive must undergo some drudgery 
to live. It is not possible to devote your time to 
study and meditation without what are quaintly but 
happily denominated private means ; these absent, a 
man must contrive to earn his bread by some service 
to the public such as the public cares to pay him for ; 
or, as Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve 
Admetus. This was to Thoreau even a sourer neces- 
sity than it is to most ; there was a love of freedom, a 
strain of the wild man, in his nature, that rebelled 
with violence against the yoke of custom ; and he was 
so eager to cultivate himself and to be happy in his 
own society, that he could consent with difficulty even 
to the interruptions of friendship. " Such are my 
engagemejifs io myself that I dare not promise," he 
once wrote in answer to an invitation ; and the italics 
are his own. Marcus Aurelius found time to study 
virtue, and between whiles to conduct the imperial 
affairs of Rome ; but Thoreau is so busy improving 
himself, that he must think twice about a morning 
call. And now imagine him condemned for eight 
hours a day to some uncongenial and unmeaning 
business ! He shrank from the very look of the me- 
chanical in life ; all should, if possible, be sweetly 
spontaneous and swimmingly progressive. Thus he 
learned to make lead-pencil?, and, when he had 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 143 

gained the best certificate and his friends began to 
congratulate him on his establishment in life, calmly 
announced that he should never make another. 
" Why should I ?" said he ; "I would not do again 
what I have done once. ' ' For when a thing has once 
been done as well as it wants to be, it is of no further 
interest to the self-improver. Yet in after years, and 
when it became needful to support his family, he re- 
turned patiendy to this mechanical art — a step more 
than worthy of himself. 

The pencils seem to have been Apollo's first experi- 
ment in the service of Admetus ; but others followed. 
" I have thoroughly tried school-keeping," he writes, 
*' and found that my expenses were in proportion, 
or rather out of proportion, to my income ; for I was 
obliged to dress and train, not to say think and be- 
heve, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bar- 
gain. As I did not teach for the benefit of my fellow- 
men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. 
1 have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten 
years to get under way in that, and that then I should 
probably be on my way to the devil." Nothing, in- 
deed, can surpass his scorn for all so-called business. 
Upon that subject gall squirts from him at a touch. 
" The whole enterprise of this nation is not illustrated 
by a thought," he writes ; "it is not warmed by a 
sentiment ; there is nothing in it for which a man 
should lay down his life, nor even his gloves." And 
again : " If our merchants did not most of them fail, 
and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of this 



144 HENRY DAVID THOREAU : 

world would be staggered. The statement that ninety 
six in a hundred doing such business surelv break 
down is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have 
revealed." The wish was probably father to the fig- 
ures ; but there is something enlivening in a hatred of 
so genuine a brand, hot as Corsican revenge, and 
sneering like Voltaire. 

Pencils, school-keeping, and trade being thus dis- 
carded one after another, Thoreau, with a stroke ol 
strategy, turned the position. He saw his way to get 
his board and lodging for practically nothing ; and 
Admetus never got less work out of any servant since 
the world began. It was his ambition to be an 
oriental philosopher ; but he was always a very Yankee, 
sort of oriental. Even in the peculiar attitude ia 
which be stood to money, his system of personal 
economics, as we may call it, he displayed a vast 
amount of truly dovv'n East calculation, and he adopted 
poverty like a piece of business. Yet his system is 
based on one or two ideas which, I believe, come 
naturally to all thoughtful youths, and are only 
pounded out of them by city uncles. Indeed, some- 
thing essentially youthful distinguishes all Thoreau' s 
knock-down blows at current opinion. Like the 
posers of a child, they leave the orthodox in a kind ol 
speechless agony. These know the thing is nonsense. 
They are sure there must be an answer, yet somehow 
cannot find it. So it is with his system of economy. 
He cuts through the subject on so new a plane that 
the accepted arguments apply no longer ; he attacks 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 145 

it in a new dialect where there are no catchwords ready 
made for the defender ; after you have been boxing 
for years on a polite, gladiatorial convention, here is 
an assailant who does not scruple to hit below the belt. 
" The cost of a thing," says he, *' is the amount of 
what I will call life which is required to be exchanged 
for it, immediately or in the long run. " I have been 
accustomed to put it to myself, perhaps more clearly, 
that the price we have 10 pay for money is paid in 
liberty. Between these two ways of it, at least, the 
reader will probably not fail to find a third definition 
of his own ; and it follows, on one or other, that a 
man may pay too dearly for his livelihood, by giving, 
in Thoreau's terms, his whole life for it, or, in mine, 
bartering for it the whole of his available liberty, and 
becoming a slave till death. There are two questions 
to be considered — the quality of what we buy, and the 
price we have to pay for jt. Do you want a thousand 
a year, a two thousand a year, or a ten thousand a 
year livelihood .? and can you afford the one you 
want ? It is a matter of taste ; it is not in the least 
degree a question of duty, though commonly supposed 
so. But there is no authority for that view anywhere. 
It is nowhere in the Bible. It is true that we might 
do a vast amount of good if we were wealthy, but it is 
also highly improbable ; not many do ; and the art 
of growing rich is not only quite distinct from that of 
doing good, but the practice of the one does not at all 
train a man for practising the other. " Money might 
be of great service to me," writes Thoreau ; " but 



1 46 HENR Y DA VID T HO RE A U : 

the difficulty now is that I do not improve my oppor- 
tunities, and therefore I am not prepared to have my 
opportunities increased." It is a mere illusion that, 
above a certain income, the personal desires will be 
satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous 
impulse. It is as difficult to be generous, or anything 
else, except perhaps a member of Parliament, on thirty 
thousand as on two hundred a year. 

Now Thoreau's tastes were well defined. He loved 
to be free, to be master of his times and seasons, to 
indulge the mind rather than the body ; he preferred 
long rambles to rich dinners, his own reflections to 
the consideration of society, and an easy, calm, un- 
fettered, active life among green trees to dull toiling 
at the counter of a bank. And such being his inclina- 
tion he determined to gratify it. A poor man must 
save off something ; he determined to save off his 
livelihood. " When a man has attained those things 
which are necessary to life," he writes, " there is an- 
other alternative than to obtain the superfluities ; he 
may adventure on life 7tow, his vacation from humbler 
toil having commenced." Thoreau would get shel- 
ter, some kind of covering for his body, and neces- 
sary daily bread ; even these he should get as cheaply 
as possible ; and then, his vacation from humbler toil 
having commenced, devote himself to oriental philoso- 
phers, the study of nature, and the work of self- 
improvement. 

Prudence, which bids us all go to the ant for wis- 
dom and hoard against the day of sickness, was not a 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 1 47 

favorite with Thoreau. He preferred that other, 
whose name is so much misappropriated : Faith. 
When he had secured the necessaries of the moment, 
he would not reckon up possible accidents or torment 
himself with trouble for the future. He had no tol- 
eration for the man " who ventures to live only by the 
aid of the mutual insurance company, which has 
promised to bury him decently." He would trust 
himself a little to the world. "We may safely trust 
a good deal more than we do," says he. " How 
much is not done by us ! or what if we had been 
taken sick .?" And then, with a stab of satire, he de- 
scribes contemporary mankind in a phrase : " All the 
day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our 
prayers and commit ourseU'es to uncertainties." It 
is not likely that the public will be much affected by 
Thoreau, when they blink the direct injunctions of 
the religion they profess ; and yet, whether we will or 
no, we make the same " hazardous ventures ; we back 
our own health and the honesty of our neighbors for 
all that we are worth ; and it is chilling to think how 
many must lose their wager. 

In 1845, twenty-eight years old, an age by which 
the liveliest have usually declined into some conform- 
ity with the world, Thoreau, with a capital of some- 
thing less than five pounds and a borrowed axe, walked 
forth into the woods by Walden Pond, and began his 
new experiment in life. He built himself a dwelling, 
and returned the axe, he says with characteristic and 
workman-like pride, sharper than when he borrowed 



1 48 HENR V DA VI D THOREA U : 

it ; he reclaimed a patch, where he cultivated beans, 
peas, potatoes, and sweet corn ; he had his bread to 
bake, his farm to dig, and for the matter of six weeks 
in the summer he worked at surveying, carpentry, or 
some other of his numerous dexterities, for hire. For 
more than five years, this was all that he required to 
do for his support, and he had the winter and most of 
the summer at his entire disposal. For six weeks of 
occupation, a little cooking and a little gentle hygienic 
gardening, the man, you may say, had as good as 
stolen his livelihood. Or we must rather allow that 
he had done far better ; for the thief himself is contin- 
ually and busily occupied ; and even one born to in- 
herit a million will have more calls upon his time than 
Thoreau. Well might he say, " What old people 
tell you you cannot do, you try and find you can. ' ' 
And how surprising is his conclusion : '* I am con- 
vinced that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a 
hardship, hut a pastime, if we will live simply and 
wisely ; as the pursuits of simpler nations are still 
the sports of the more artificial. 

When he had enough of that kind of life, he showed 
the same simplicity in giving it up as in beginning it. 
There are some who could have done the one, but, 
vanity forbidding, not the other ; and that is perhaps 
the story of the hermits ; but Thoreau made no fetich 
of his own example, and did what he wanted squarely. 
And five years is long enough for an experiment and 
to prove the success of transcendental Yankeeism. It 
is not his frugality which is worthy of note ; for, to 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 149 

begin with, that was inborn, and therefore inimitable 
by others who are differently constituted ; and again, 
it was no new thing, but has often been equalled by 
poor Scotch students at the universities. The point 
is the sanity of his view of life, and the insight with 
which he recognized the position of money, and 
thought out for himself the problem of riches and a 
livelihood. Apart from his eccentricities, he had per- 
ceived, and was acting on, a truth of universal appli- 
cation. For money enters in two different characters 
into the scheme of life. A certain amount, varying 
with the number and empire of our desires, is a true 
necessary to each one of us in the present order of so- 
ciety ; but beyond that amount, money is a commod- 
ity to be bought or not to be bought, a luxury in 
which we may either indulge or stint ourselves, like 
any other. And there are many luxuries that we may 
legitimately prefer to it, such as a grateful conscience, 
a country life, or the woman of our inclination. 
Trite, flat, and obvious as this conclusion may appear, 
we have only to look round us in society to see how 
scantily it has been recognized ; and perhaps even 
ourselves, after a little reflection, may decide to spend 
a trifle less for money, and indulge ourselves a trifle 
more in the article of freedom. 



1 5 o HENR V DA VID THOREA U : 

III. 

*' To have done anything by which you earned 
money merely," says Thoreau, "is to be" (have 
been, he means) " idle and worse." There are two 
passages in his letters, both, oddly enough, relating to 
firewood, which must be brought together to be lightly 
understood. So taken, they contain between them 
the marrow of all good sense on the subject of work 
in its relation to something broader than mere liveli- 
hood. Here is the first : ** I suppose I have burned 
up a good-sized tree to-night— and for what ? I set- 
tled with Mr. Tarbell for it the other day ; but that 
wasn't the final settlement. I got off cheaply from 
him. At last one will say : ' Let us see, how much 
wood did you burn, sir ? ' And I shall shudder to 
tnink that the next question will be, ' What did you 
do while you were warm ? ' " Even after we have 
settled with Admetus in the person of Mr. Tarbell, 
there comes, you see, a further question. It is not 
enough to have earned our livelihood. Either the 
earning itself should have been serviceable to man- 
kind, or something else must follow. To live is 
sometimes very difficult, but it is never meritorious in 
itself ; and we must have a reason to allege to our 
own conscience why we should continue to exist upon 
this crowded earth. If Thoreau had simply dwelt in 
his house at Walden, a lover of trees, birds, and fishes, 
and the open air and virtue, a reader of wise books, 
an idle, selfish self-improver, he would have managed 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 151 

to cheat Admetus, but, to cling to metaphor, the devil 
would have had him in the end. Those who can 
avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of pri- 
vate means, and even those who can, by abstinence, 
reduce the necessary amount of it to some six weeks 
a year, having the more liberty, have only the higher 
moral obligation to be up and doing in the interest of 
man. 

The second passage is this : " There is a far more 
important and warming heat, commonly lost, which 
precedes the burning of the wood. It is the smoke 
of industry, which is incense. I had been so thor- 
oughly warmed in body and spirit, that when at length 
my fuel was housed, I came near selling it to the ash- 
man, as if I had extracted all its heat." Industry is, 
in itself and when properly chosen, delightful and 
profitable to the worker ; and when your toil has been 
a pleasure, you have not, as Thoreau says, '' earned 
money merely," but money, health, delight, and 
moral profit, all in one. " We must heap up a great 
pile of doing for a small diameter of being," he says 
in another place ; and then exclaims, " How admi- 
rably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture 
by devotion to his art !" We may escape uncon- 
genial toil, only to devote ourselves to that which is 
congenial. It is only to transact some higher busi- 
ness that even Apollo dare play the truant from Ad- 
metus. We must all work for the sake of work ; we 
must all work, as Thoreau says again, in any " ab- 
sorbing pursuit — it does not much matter what, so it 



1 5 2 HENR V DA VI D THOREA U : 

be honest;" but the most profitable work is that 
which combines into one continued effort the largest 
proportion of the powers and desires of a man's na- 
ture ; that into which he will plunge with ardor, and 
from which he will desist with reluctance ; in which 
he will know the weariness of fatigue, but not that of 
satiety ; and which will be ever fresh, pleasing, and 
stimulating to his taste. Such work holds a man to- 
gether, braced at all points ; it does not suffer him to 
doze or wander ; it keeps him actively conscious of 
himself, yet raised among superior interests ; it gives 
him the profit of industry with the pleasures of a pas- 
time. This is what his art should be to the true artist, 
and that to a degree unknown in other and less in- 
timate pursuits. For other professions stand apart 
from the human business of life ; but an art has its 
seat at the centre of the artist's doings^nd. sufferings, 
deals directly with his experiences, teaches him the 
lessons of his own fortunes and mishaps, and becomes 
a part of his biography. So says Goethe : 

" Spat erklingt Avas friih erklang ; 
Gliick und Ungllick wird Gesang." 

Now Thoreau's art was literature ; and it was one 
of which he had conceived most ambitiously. He 
loved and believed in good books. He said well, 
" Life is not habitually seen from any common plat- 
form so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of lit- 
erature. " But the literature he loved was of the 
heroic order. " Books, not which afford us a cower- 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 153 

ing enjoyment, but in which each thought is of un- 
usual daring ; such as an idle man cannot read, and 
a timid one would not be entertained by, which even 
make us dangerous to existing institutions — such I 
call good books. " He did not think them easy to be 
read. ' ' The heroic books, ' ' he says, ' ' even if printed 
in the character of our mother-tongue, will always be 
in a language dead to degenerate times ; and we must 
laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, 
conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits 
out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have, " 
Xor does he suppose that such books are easily writ- 
ten. " Great prose, of equal elevation, commands 
our respect more than great verse," says he, "since 
it implies a more permanent and level height, a life 
more pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. 
The poet often only makes an irruption, like the Par- 
thian, and is off again, shooting while he retreats ; 
but the prose writer has conquered like a Roman and 
settled colonies." We may ask ourselves, almost 
with dismay, whether such works exist at all but in 
the imagination of the student. For the bulk of the 
best of books is apt to be made up with ballast ; and 
those in which energy of thought is combined with 
any stateliness of utterance may be almost counted on 
the fingers. Looking round in English for a book 
that should answer Thoreau's two demands of a style 
like poetry and sense that shall be both original and 
inspiriting, I come to Milton's Areopagitica, and can 
name no other instance for the moment. Two things 



154 HENRY DAVID THOREAU : 

at least are plain : that if a man will condescend to 
nothing more commonplace in the way of reading, he 
must not look to have a large library ; and that if he 
proposes himself to write in a similar vein, he will find 
his work cut out for him. 

Thoreau composed seemingly while he walked, or 
at least exercise and composition were with him inti- 
mately connected ; for we are told that " the length 
of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. " 
He speaks in one place of " plainness and vigor, the 
ornam-ents of style," which is rather too paradoxical 
to be comprehensively true. In another he remarks : 
" As for stjle of writing, if one has anything to say it 
drops from him simply as a stone falls to the ground. " 
We must conjecture a very large sense indeed for the 
phrase " if one has an)' thing to say." When truth 
flows from a man, fittingly clothed in style and with- 
out conscious effort, it is because the effort has been 
made and the work practically completed before he 
sat down to write. It is only out of fulness of think- 
ing that expression drops perfect like a ripe fruit ; and 
when Thoreau wrote so nonchalantly at his desk, it 
was because he had been vigorously active during his 
walk. For neither clearness, compression, nor beauty 
of language, come to any living creature till after a 
busy and a prolonged acquaintance with the subject 
on hand. Easy writers are those who, like Walter 
Scott, choose to remain contented with a less degree 
of perfection than is legitimately within the compass 
of their powers. We hear of Shakespeare and his 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS, 155 

clean manuscript ; but in face of the evidence of the 
style itself and of the various editions of Hamlet^ this 
merely proves that Messrs. Hemming and Condell 
were unacquainted with the common enough phe- 
nomenon called a fair copy. He who would recast a 
tragedy already given to the world must frequently 
and earnestly have revised details in the study. 
Thoreau himself, and in spite of his protestations, is an 
instance of even extreme research in one direction ; 
and his effort after heroic utterance is proved not only 
by the occasional finish, but by the determined exag- 
geration of his style. " I trust you realize what an 
exaggerator I am — that I lay myself out to exagger- 
ate," he writes. And again, hinting at the explana- 
tion : " Who that has heard a strain of music feared 
lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever V 
And yet once more, in his essay on Carlyle, and this 
time with his meaning well in hand : "No truth, 
we think, was ever expressed but with this sort of 
emphasis, that for the time there seemed to be no 
other." Thus Thoreau was an exaggerative and a 
parabolical writer, not because he loved the literature 
of the East, but from a desire that people should under- 
stand and realize what he was writing. He was near 
the truth upon the general question ; but in his own 
particular method, it appears to me, he wandered. 
Literature is not less a conventional art than painting 
or sculpture ; and it is the least striking, as it is the 
most comprehensive of the three. To hear a strain of 
music, to see a beautiful woman, a river, a great city, 



156 HENRY DAVID THOREAU : 

or a starry night, is to make a man despair of his Lil- 
liputian arts in language. Now, to gain that emphasis 
which seems denied to us by the very nature of the 
medium, the proper method of literature is by selec- 
tion, which is a kind of negative exaggeration. It is 
the right of the literary artist, as Thoreau was on the 
point of seeing, to leave out whatever does not suit 
his purpose. Thus we extract the pure gold ; and 
thus the well-written story of a noble life becomes, by 
its very omissions, more thrilling to the reader. But 
to go beyond this, like Thoreau, and to exaggerate 
directly, is to leave the saner classical tradition, and 
to put the reader on his guard. And when you write 
the whole for the half, you do not express your 
thought more forcibly, but only express a different 
thought which is not yours. 

Thoreau' s true subject was the pursuit of self-im- 
provement combined with an unfriendly criticism of 
life as it goes on in our societies ; it is there that he 
best displays the freshness and surprising trenchancy 
of his intellect ; it is there that his style becomes plain 
and vigorous, and therefore, according to his own 
formula, ornamental. Yet he did not care to follow 
this vein singly, but must drop into it by the way in 
books of a different purport. Walden, or Life in the 
Woods, A Week on the Concord and Merriinack Rivers, 
The Maine Woods, — such are the titles he affects. 
He was probably reminded by his delicate critical per- 
ception that the true business of literature is with nar- 
rative ; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 157 

enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its de- 
fects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as 
they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, 
can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly 
natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must 
be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its 
whole story to the reader. Hence the effect of anec- 
dote on simple minds ; and hence good biographies 
and works of high, imaginative art, are not only far 
more entertaining, but far more edifying, than books 
of theory or precept. Now Thoreau could not clothe 
his opinions in the garment of art, for that was not 
his talent ; but he sought to gain the same elbow- 
room for himself, and to afford a similar relief to his 
readers, by mingling his thoughts with a record of ex- 
perience. 

Again, he was a lover of nature. The quality which 
we should call mystery in a painting, and which be- 
longs so particularly to the aspect of the external world 
and to its influence upon our feelings, was one which 
he was never weary of attempting to reproduce in his 
books. The seeming significance of nature's appear- 
ances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and 
the thrilling response which they waken in the mind 
of man, continued to surprise and stimulate his spirits. 
It appeared to him, I think, that if we could only 
write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedes- 
trian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour 
of reality direct upon our pages ; and that, if it were 
once thus captured and expressed, a new and instruc- 



1 5 8 HENR V DA VID THOREA I ' .• 

tive relation might appear between men's thoughts and 
the phenomena of nature. This was the eagle that he 
pursued all his life long, like a schoolboy with a but- 
terfly net. Hear him to a friend : " Let me suggest 
a theme for you — to state to yourself precisely and 
completely what that walk over the mountains 
amounted to for you, returning to this essay again 
and again until you are satisfied that all that was im- 
portant in your experience is in it. Don't suppose 
that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you 
try, but at 'em again ; especially when, after a suffi- 
cient pause, you suspect that you are touching the 
heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows 
there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not 
that the story need be long, but it will take a long 
while to make it short." Such was the method, not 
consistent for a man whose meanings were to " drop 
from him as a stone falls to the ground." Perhaps 
the most successful work that Thoreau ever accom- 
plished in this direction is to be found in the passages 
relating to fish in the Week. These are remarkable 
for a vivid truth of impression and a happy suitability 
of language, not frequently surpassed. 

Whatever Thoreau tried to do was tried in fair, 
square prose, with sentences solidly built, and no help 
from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a progres- 
sion — I cannot call it a progress — in his work toward a 
more and more strictly prosaic level, until at last he 
sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emerson men- 
tions havinsr once remarked to Thoreau : " Who 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 159 

would not like to write something which all can read, 
like Robinson Crusoe .^ and who does not see with re- 
gret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic 
treatment which delights everybody ?" I must say in 
passing that it is not the right materialistic treatment 
which delights the world in Robinson^ but the romantic 
and philosophic interest of the fable. The same treat- 
ment does quite the reverse of delighting us when it is 
applied, in Colonel Jack, to the management of a plan- 
tation. But I cannot help suspecting Thoreau to 
have been influenced either by this identical remark 
or by some other closely similar in meaning. He be- 
gan to fall more and more into a detailed materialistic 
treatment ; he went into the business doggedly, as 
one who should make a guide-book ; he not only 
chronicled what had been important in his own ex- 
perience, but whatever might have been important in 
the experience of anybody else ; not only what had 
affected him, but all that he saw or heard. His ardor 
had grown less, or perhaps it was inconsistent with a 
right materialistic treatment to display such emotions 
as he felt ; and, to complete the eventful change, he 
chose, from a sense of moral dignity, to gut these 
later works of the saving quality of humor. He was 
not one of those authors who have learned, in his own 
words, " to leave out their dulness." He inflicts his 
full quantity upon the reader in such books as Cape 
Cod, or The Yankee in Canada. Of the latter he con- 
fessed that he had not managed to get much of him- 
self into it. Heaven knows he had not. nor vet much 



1 60 HENR V DA VID THOREA U : 

of Canada, we may hope. " Nothing, " he says some- 
where, " can shock a brave man but dulness. " Well^ 
there are few spots more shocking to the brave than 
the pages of The Yankee in Canada. 

There are but three books of his that will be read 
with much pleasure : the Week, Walden^ and the col- 
lected letters. As to his poetry, Emerson's word shall 
suffice for us, it is so accurate and so prettily said : 
" The thyme and marjoram are not yet honey.' ' In 
this, as in his prose, he relied greatly on the goodwill 
of the reader, and wrote throughout in faith. It was 
an exercise of faith to suppose that many would under- 
stand the sense of his best work, or that any could be 
exhilarated by the dreary chronicling of his worst. 
" But," as he says, " the gods do not hear any rude 
or discordant sound,, as we learn from the echo ; and 
I know that the nature toward which I launch these 
sounds is so rich that it will modulate anew and 
wonderfully improve my rudest strain. ' ' 



IV. 

"What means the fact," he cries, "that a soul 
which has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another 
listening soul such an infinite confidence in it, even 
while it is expressing its despair.?" The question is 
an echo and an illustration of the words last quoted ; 
and it forms the key-note of his thoughts on friend- 
ship. No one else, to my knowledge, has spoken in 
so high and just a spirit of the kindly relations ; and 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. i6i 

^ doubt whether it be a drawback that these lessons 
should come from one in many ways so unfitted to 
be a teacher in this branch. The very coldness and 
egoism of his own intercourse gave him a clearer in- 
sight into the intellectual basis of our warm, mutual 
tolerations ; and testimony to their worth comes with 
added force from one who was solitary and disoblig- 
ing, and of whom a friend remarked, with equal wit 
and wisdom, '' I love Henry, but I cannot like him." 

He can hardly be persuaded to make any distinction 
between love and friendship ; in such rarefied and 
freezing air, upon the mountain-tops of meditation, 
had he taught himself to breathe. He was, indeed, 
too accurate an observer not to have remarked that 
"there exists already a natural disinterestedness and 
liberality" between men and women; yet, he 
thought, " friendship is no respecter of sex." Per- 
haps there is a sense in which the words are true ; but 
they were spoken in ignorance ; and perhaps we shall 
have put the matter most correctly, if we call love a 
foundation for a nearer and freer degree of friendship 
than can be possible without it. For there are deli- 
cacies, eternal between persons of the same sex, which 
are melted and disappear in the warmth of love. 

To both, if they are to be right, he attributes the 
same nature and condition. " We are not what we 
are," says he, " nor do we treat or esteem each other 
for such, but for what we are capable of being." 
" A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compli- 
ment of expecting all the virtues from us, and who 



1 6 2 HENR V DA VI D THOREA U : 

can appreciate them in us." " Tlie friend asks no 
return but that his friend will religiously accept and 
wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him." " It 
is the merit and preservation of friendship that it takes 
place on a level higher than the actual characters of 
the parties would seem to warrant." This is to put 
friendship on a pedestal indeed ; and yet the root of 
the matter is there ; and the last sentence, in particu- 
lar, is like a light in a dark place, and makes many 
mysteries plain. We are different with different 
friends ; yet if we look closely we shall find that every 
such relation reposes on some particular apotheosis of 
oneself ; with each friend, although we could not dis- 
tinguish it in words from any other, we have at least 
one special reputation to preserve : and it is thus that 
we run, when mortified, to our friend or the woman 
that we love, not to hear ourselves called better, but 
to be better men m point of fact. We seek this soci- 
ety to flatter ourselves with our own good conduct 
And hence any falsehood in the relation, any incom- 
plete or perverted understanding, will spoil even the 
pleasure of these visits. Thus says Thoreau again : 
"Only lovers know the value of truth." And yet 
again : " They ask for words and deeds, when a true 
relation is word and deed." 

But it follows that since they are neither of them so 
good as the other hopes, and each is, in a very hon- 
est manner, playing a part above his powers, such 
an intercourse must often be disappointing to both, 
*' We may bid farewell sooner than complain, " says 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 163 

Thoreau, " for our complaint is too well grounded to 
be uttered." " We have not so good a right to hate 
any as our friend." 

" It were treason to our love 
And a sin to God above, 
One iota to abate 
Of a pure, impartial hate." 

Love is not blind, nor yet forgiving. " O yes, be- 
lieve me," as the song says, ** Love has eyes !" The 
nearer the intimacy, the more cuttingly do we feel the 
unworthiness of those we love ; and because you love 
one, and would die for that love to-morrow, you have 
not forgiven, and you never will forgive, that friend's 
misconduct. If you want a person's faults, go to 
those who love him. They will not tell you, but they 
know. And herein lies the magnanimous courage of 
love, that it endures this knowledge without change. 

It required a cold, distant personality like that of 
Thoreau, perhaps, to recognize and certainly to utter 
this truth ; for a more human love makes it a point 
of honor not to acknowledge those faults of which it 
is most conscious. But his point of view is both 
high and dry. He has no illusions ; he does not give 
way to love any more than to hatred, but preserves 
them both with care like valuable curiosities. A more 
bald-headed picture of life, if I may so express myself, 
has seldom been presented. He is an egoist ; he does 
not remember, or does not think it worth while to re- 
mark, that, in these near intimacies, we are ninety- 
nine times disappointed in our beggarly selves for once 



1 64 HENR V DA VI D T HO RE. 4 U : 

that we are disappointed in our friend ; that it is we 
who seem most frequently undeserving of the love 
that unites us ; and that it is by our friend's conduct 
that we are continually rebuked and yet strengthened 
for a fresh endeavor. Thoreau is dry, priggish, and 
selfish. It is profit he is after in these intimacies ; 
moral profit, certainly, but still profit to himself. It 
you will be the sort of friend I want, he remarks 
naively, " my education cannot dispense with your so- 
ciety." His education ! as though a friend were a 
dictionary. And with all this, not one word about 
pleasure, or laughter, or kisses, or any quality of 
flesh and blood. It was not inappropriate, surely, 
that he had such close relations with the fish. We 
can understand the friend already quoted, when he 
cried : "As for taking his arm, I would as soon 
think of taking the arm of an elm -tree 1" 

As a matter of fact he experienced but a broken 
enjoyment in his intimacies. He says he has been 
perpetually on the brink of the sort of intercourse he 
wanted, and yet never completely attained it. And 
what else had he to expect when he would not, in a 
happy phrase of Carlyle's, "nestle down into it"? 
Truly, so it will be always if you only stroll in upon 
your friends as you might stroll in to see a cricket 
match ; and even then not simply for the pleasure of 
the thing, but with some after-thought of self-improve- 
ment, as though you had come to the cricket match 
to bet. It was his theory that people saw each other 
too frequently, so that their curiosity was not properly 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 165 

whetted, nor had they anything fresh to communicate ; 
but friendship must be something else than a society 
for mutual improvement — indeed, it must only be 
that by the way, and to some extent unconsciously ; 
and if Thoreau had been a man instead of a manner 
of elm- tree, he would have felt that he saw his friends 
too seldom, and have reaped benefits unknown to his 
philosophy from a more sustained and easy intercourse. 
We might remind him of his own words about love : 
" We should have no reserve ; we should give the 
whole of ourselves to that business. But commonly 
m.en have not imagination enough to be thus employed 
about a human being, but must be coopering a barrel, 
forsooth." Ay, or reading oriental philosophers. It 
is not the nature of the rival occupation, it is the fact 
that you suffer it to be a rival, that renders loving in- 
timacy impossible. Nothing is given for nothing in 
this world ; there can be no true love, even on your 
own side, without devotion ; devotion is the exercise 
of love, by which it grows ; but if you will give 
enough of that, if you will pay the price in a sufficient 
*' amount of what you call life," why then, indeed, 
whether with wife or comrade, you may have months 
and even years of such easy, natural, pleasurable, and 
.yet improving intercourse as shall make time a mo- 
ment and kindness a delight. 

The secret of his retirement lies not in misanthropy, 
of which he had no tincture, but part in his engross- 
ing design of self-improvement and part in the real 
deficiencies of social intercourse. He was not so 



166 HENR V DA VID THOREA U : 

much difficult about his fellow human beings as iie 
could not tolerate the terms of their association. He 
could take to a man for any genuine qualities, as we 
see by his admirable sketch of the Canadian woodcut- 
ter in Walde7t ; but he would not consent, in his own 
words, to ' * feebly fabulate and paddle in the social 
slush." It seemed to him, I think, that society is 
precisely the reverse of friendship, in that it takes place 
on a lower level than the characters oi any of the 
parties would warrant us to expect. The society talk 
of even the most brilliant man is of greatly less ac- 
count than what you will get from him in (as the 
French say) a little committee. And Thoreau wanted 
geniality ; he had not enough of the superficial, even 
at command ; he could not swoop into a parlor and, 
in the naval phrase, " cut out" a human being from 
that dreary port ; nor had he inclination for the task. 
I suspect he loved books and nature as well and near 
as warmly as he loved his fellow-creatures, — a melan- 
choly, lean degeneration of the human character. 

" As for the dispute about solitude and society," he 
thus sums up : " Any comparison is impertinent. It 
is an idling down on the plain at the base of the moun- 
tain instead of climbing steadily to its top. Of course 
you will be glad of all the society you can get to go 
up with } Will you go to glory with me ? is the bur- 
den of the song. It is not that we love to be alone, 
but that we love to soar, and when we do soar the 
company grows thinner and thinner till there is none 
at all. It is either the tribune on the plain, a sermon 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 167 

on the mount, or a very private ecstasy still higher up. 
Use all the society that will abet you." But surely it 
is no very extravagant opinion that it is better to give 
than to receive, to serve than to use our companions ; 
and above all, where there is no question of service 
upon either side, that it is good to enjoy their com- 
pany like a natural man. It is curious and in some 
ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best cor- 
rected out of his own mouth ; and so, to conclude, 
here is another passage from Thoreau which seem.s 
aimed directly at himself : " Do not be too moral ; 
you may cheat yourself out o( much life so. . . . All 
fables, ijideed, have their morals j but the innocent en- 
joy the story. ' ' 



" The only obligation," says he, " which I have a 
right to assume is to .do at any time what I think 
right." *' Why should we ever go abroad, even across 
the way, to ask a neighbor's advice ?'' " There is a 
nearer neighbor within, who is incessantly telling us 
how we should behave. But we wait for the neigh- 
bor without to tell us of some false, easier way.'* 
*' The greater part of what my neighbors call good I 
believe in my soul to be bad." To be what we are, 
and to become what we are capable of becoming, is 
the only end of life. It is " when we fall behind our- 
selves' ' that ' ' we are cursed with duties and the neg- 
lect of duties." " I love the wild," he says, " not 
less than the good." And again: "The life of a 



1 68 HENR V DA VID THOREA U : 

good man will hardly improve us more than the life 
of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly 
in the infringement as in the observance, and " (mark 
this) " our lives are sustained by a nearly equal ex- 
pe?ise of virtue of some kind. " Even although he 
were a prig, it will be owned he could announce a 
startling doctrine. " As for doing good," he writes 
elsewhere, " that is one of the professions that are 
full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strar\ge as 
it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with 
my constitution. Probably I should not conscien- 
tiously and deliberately forsake my particular calling 
to do the good which society demands of me, to save 
the universe from annihilation ; and I believe that a 
like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all 
that now preserves it. If you should ever be betrayed 
into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left 
hand know what your right hand does, for it is not 
worth knowing." Elsewhere he returns upon the 
subject, and explains his meaning thus : " If I ever 
did a man any good in their sense, of course it was 
something exceptional and insignificant compared with 
the good or evil I am constantly doing by being what 
I am." 

There is a rude nobility, like that of a barbarian 
king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and in- 
difference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of 
others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity. 
This was partly the result of theory, for he held the 
world too mysterious to be criticised, and asks con- 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 169 

clusively : ** What right have 1 to grieve who have 
not ceased to wonder ?' ' But it sprang still more from 
constitutional indifference and superiority ; and he 
grew up healthy, composed, and unconscious from 
among life's horrors, like a green bay-tree from a field 
of battle. It was from this lack in himself that he 
failed to do justice to the spirit of Christ ; for while he 
could glean more meaning from individual precepts 
than any score of Christians, yet he conceived life in 
such a different hope, and viewed it with such contrary 
emotions, that the sense and purport of the doctrine 
as a whole seems to have passed him by or left him 
unimpressed. He could understand the idealism of 
the Christian view, but he was himself so unaffectedly 
unhuman that he did not recognize the human inten- 
tion and essence of that teaching. Hence he com- 
plained that Christ did not leave us a rule that was 
proper and sufficient for this world, not having con- 
ceived the nature of the rule that was laid down ; for 
things of that character that are sufficiently unaccept- 
able become positively non-existent to the mind. But 
perhaps we shall best appreciate the defect in Thoreau 
by seeing it supplied in the case of Whitman. For 
the one, I feel confident, is the disciple of the other ; 
it is what Thoreau clearly whispered that Whitman so 
uproariously bawls ; it is the same doctrine, but with 
how immense a difference ! the same argument, but 
used to what a new conclusion ! Thoreau had plenty 
of humor until he tutored himself out of it, and so 
forfeited that best birthright of a sensible man ; Whit- 



I 7 o HENR Y DA VID THOREA U . 

man, in that respect, seems to have been sent into the 
world naked and unashamed ; and yet by a strange 
consummation, it is the theory of the former that is 
arid, abstract, and claustral. Of these two philoso- 
phies so nearly identical at bottom, the one pursues 
Self-improvement — a churlish, mangy dog ; the other 
is up with the morning, in the best of health, and fol- 
lowing the nymph Happiness, buxom, blithe, and 
debonair. Happiness, at least, is not solitary ; it joys 
to communicate ; it loves others, for it depends on 
them for its existence ; it sanctions and encourages to 
all delights that are not unkind in themselves ; if it 
lived to a thousand, it would not make excision of a 
single humorous passage ; and while the self-improver 
dwindles toward the prig, and, if he be not of an ex- 
cellent constitution, may even grow deformed into an 
Obermann, the very name and appearance of a happy 
man breathe of good-nature, and help the rest of us 
to live. 

In the case of Thoreau, so great a show of doctrine 
demands some outcome in the field of action. If 
nothing were to be done but build a shanty beside 
Walden Pond, we have heard altogether too much of 
these declarations of independence. That the man 
wrote some books is nothing to the purpose, for the 
same has been done in a suburban villa. That he 
kept himself happy is perhaps a sufficient excuse, but 
it is disappointing to the reader. We may be unjust, 
but when a man despises commerce and philanthropy 
alike, and has views of good so soaring that he must 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 171 

take himself apart from mankind for their cultivation, 
we will not be content without some striking act It 
was not Thoreau's fault if he were not martyred ; had 
the occasion come, he would have made a noble end- 
ing. As it is, he did once seek to interfere in the 
world's course ; he made one practical appearance on 
the stage of affairs ; and a strange one it was, and 
strangely characteristic of the nobility and the eccen- 
tricity of the man. It was forced on him by his calm 
but radical opposition to negro slavery. " Voting for 
the right is doing nothingfor it, " he saw^ ; " it is only 
expressing to men feebly your desire that it should 
prevail." For his part, he would not "for an in- 
stant recognize that political organization for his gov- 
ernment which \'s, ih^ slave s government also." "I 
do not hesitate to say," he adds, " that those who call 
themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually 
withdraw their support, both in person and property, 
from the government of Massachusetts." That is 
what he did : in 1843 he ceased to pay the poll-tax. 
The highway-tax he paid, for he said he was as desir- 
ous to be a good neighbor as to be a bad subject ; but 
no more poll-tax to the State of Massachusetts. 
Thoreau had now seceded, and was a polity unto him- 
self ; or, as he explains it with admirable sense, " In 
fact, I quietly declare war with the State after my 
fashion, though I will still make what use and get 
what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases. ' ' 
He was put in prison ; but that was a part of his de- 
sign. "Under a government which imprisons any 



172 HENR V DA VTD THOREA U : 

unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. 
I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, 
if ten men whom I could name— ay, if one honest 
man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold 
slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartner- 
ship, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it 
would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it 
matters not how small the beginning may seem to be ; 
what is once well done is done forever." Such was 
his theory of civil disobedience. 

And the upshot } A friend paid the tax for him ; 
continued year by year to pay it in the sequel ; and 
Thoreau was free to walk the woods unmolested. It 
v/as a fiasco, but to me it does not seem laughable ; 
even those who joined in the laughter at the moment 
would be insensibly affected by this quaint instance of 
a good man's horror for injustice. We may compute 
the worth of that one night's imprisonment as out- 
weighing half a hundred voters at some subsequent 
election : and if Thoreau had possessed as great a 
power of persuasion as (let us say) Falstaff, if he had, 
counted a party however small, if his example had 
been followed by a hundred or by thirty of his fel- 
lows, I cannot but believe it would have greatly pre- 
cipitated the era of freedom and justice. We feel the 
misdeeds of our country with so little fervor, for we 
are not witnesses to the suffering they cause ; but 
when we see them wake an active horror in our fellow- 
man, when we see a neighbor prefer to lie in prison 
rather than be so much as passively implicated in their 



HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS. 173 

perpetration, even the dullest of us will begin to realize 
them with a quicker pulse. 

Not far from twenty years later, when Captain John 
Brown was taken at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau was the 
first to come forward in his defence. The commit- 
tees wrote to him unanimously that his action was 
premature. ' ' I did not send to you for advice, ' ' said 
he, " but to announce that I was to speak." I have 
used the word " defence ;" in truth he did not seek 
to defend him, even declared it would be better for 
the good cause that he should die ; but he praised his 
action as I think Brown would have liked to hear it 
praised. - 

Thus this singularly eccentric and independent 
mind, wedded to a character of so much strength, 
singleness, and purity, pursued its own path of self- 
improvement for more than half a century, part gym- 
nosophist, part backwoodsman ; and thus did it come 
twice, though in a subaltern attitude, into the field of 
political history. 

Note. — For many facts in the above essay, among which 
I may mention the incident of the squirrel, I am indebted to 
Thoreau : His Life and Aims, by J- A. Page, or, as is well 
known, Dr. Japp. 



YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO. 

The name at the head of this page is probably un» 
known to the English reader, and yet I think it should 
become a household word like that of Garibaldi or 
John Brown. Some day soon, we may expect to hear 
more fully the details of Yoshida's history, and the 
degree of his influence in the transformation of Japan ; 
even now there must be Englishmen acquainted with 
the subject, and perhaps the appearance of this sketch 
may elicit something more complete and exact. I 
wish to say that I am not, rightly speaking, the author 
of the present paper : I tell the story on the authority 
of an intelligent Japanese gentleman, Mr. Taiso 
Masaki, who told it me with an emotion that does 
honor to his heart ; and though I have taken some 
pains, and sent my notes to him to be corrected, this 
can be no more than an imperfect outline. 

Yoshida-Torajiro was son to the hereditary military 
instructor of the house of Choshu. The name you 
are to pronounce with an equality of accent on the 
different syllables, almost as in French, the vowels as 
in Italian, but the consonants in the English manner 
— except they, which has the French sound, or, as it 
has been cleverly proposed to write it, the sound of 



YOSHIDA- TORAJIRO. 1 7 5 

zh. Yoshida was very learned in Chinese letters, or, 
as we might say, in the classics, and in his father's 
subject ; fortification was among his favorite studies, 
and he was a poet from his boyhood. He was born 
to a lively and intelligent patriotism ; the condition 
of Japan was his great concern ; and while he pro- 
jected a better future, he lost no opportunity of im- 
proving his knowledge of her present state. With this 
end he was continually travelling in his youth, going 
on foot and sometimes with three days' provision on 
his back, in the brave, self-helpful manner of all 
heroes. He kept a full diary while he was thus upon 
his journeys, but it is feared that these notes liave been 
destroyed. If their value were in any respect such as 
we have reason to expect from the man's character, 
this would be a loss not easy to exaggerate. It is still 
wonderful to the Japanese how far he contrived to 
push these explorations ; a cultured gentleman of 
that land and period would leave a complimentary 
poem wherever he had been hospitably entertained ; 
and a friend of Mr. Masaki, who was likewise a great 
wanderer, has found such traces of Yoshida's passage 
in very remote regions of Japan. 

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no 
preparation is thought necessary ; but Yoshida con- 
sidered otherwise, and he studied the miseries of his 
fellow-countrymen with as much attention and re- 
search as though he had been going to write a book 
instead of merely to propose a remedy. To a man 
of his intensity and singleness, there is no question 



1 76 YOSHIDA . TOR A J IRQ. 

but that this survey was melancholy in the extreme. 
His dissatisfaction is proved by the eagerness with 
which he threw himself into the cause of reform ; and 
what would have discouraged another braced Yoshida 
for his task. As he professed the theory of arms, it 
was firstly the defences of Japan that occupied his 
mind. The external feebleness of that country was 
then illustrated by the manners of overriding bar- 
barians, and the visits of big barbarian war ships : she 
was a country beleaguered. Thus the patriotism of 
Yoshida took a form which may be said to have de- 
feated itself : he had it upon him to keep out these 
all-powerful foreigners, whom it is now one of his 
chief merits to have helped to introduce ; but a man 
who follows his own virtuous heart will be always 
found in the end to have been fighting for the best. 
One thing leads naturally to another in an awakened 
mind, and that with an upward progress from, effect to 
cause. The power and knov.^ledge of these foreigners 
were things inseparable ; by envying them their mili- 
tary strength, Yoshida came to envy them their cul- 
ture ; from the desire to equal them in the fir-st, sprang 
his desire to share wnth them in the second ; and thus 
he is found treating in the same book of a new scheme 
to strengthen the defences of Kioto and of the estab- 
lishment, in the same city, of a university of foreign 
teachers. He hoped, perhaps, to get the good of othe? 
lands without their evil ; to enable Japan to profit by 
the knowledge of the barbarians, and still keep her 
inviolate with her own arts and virtues. But whatever 



VO SH ID A - TORAJIR O. 177 

was the precise nature of his hope, the means b} 
which it was to be accompHshed were both difficult 
and obvious. Some one with eyes and understanding 
must break through the official cordon, escape into 
the new world, and study this other civilization on the 
spot. And who could be better suited for the busi- 
ness ? It was not without danger, but he was without 
fear. It needed preparation and insight ; and what 
had he done since he was a child but prepare himself 
with the best culture of Japan, and acquire in his ex- 
cursions the power and habit of observing .^ 

He was but twenty-two, and already all this was 
clear in his mind, when news reached Choshu that 
Commodore Perry was lying near to Yeddo. Here, 
then, was the patriot's opportunity. Among the 
Samurai of Choshu, and in particular among the 
councillors of the Daimio, his general culture, his 
views, which the enlightened were eager to accept, 
and, above all, the prophetic charm, the radiant per- 
suasion of the man, had gained him many and sincer*- 
disciples. He had thus a strong influence at the prO' 
vincial Court ; and so he obtained leave to quit thf 
district, and, by way of a pretext, a privilege to follow 
his profession in Yeddo. Thither he hurried, and ar- 
rived in time to be too late : Perry had weighed anchor, 
and his sails had vanished from the waters of Japan. 
But Yoshida, having put his hand to the plough, was 
not the man to go back ; he had entered upon this 
business, and, please God, he would carr}Mt through ; 
and so he gave up his professional career and remained 



1 7 8 VO SHI DA - TORAJIR O. 

in Yeddo to be at hand against the next opportunity. 
By this behavior he put himself into an attitude toward 
his superior, the Daimio of Choshu, which I cannot 
thoroughly explain. Certainly, he became a Ronyin, 
a broken man, a feudal outlaw ; certainly he was 
liable to be arrested if he set foot upon his native 
province ; yet 1 am cautioned that " he did not leally 
break his allegiance," but only so far separated him- 
self as that the prince could no longer be held account- 
able for his late vassal's conduct. There is some 
nicety of feudal custom here that escapes my compre- 
hension. 

In Yeddo, with this nondescript political status, and 
cut off from any means of livelihood, he was jo}'fully 
supported by those who sympathized with his design. 
One was Sakuma-Shozan, hereditary retainer of one 
of the Shogun's councillors, and from him he got 
more than money or than money's worth. A steady, 
respectable man, with an eje to the world's opinion, 
Sakuma was one of those who, if they cannot do great 
deeds in their own person, have yet an ardor of ad- 
miration for those who can, that recommends them to 
the gratitude of history. They aid and abet greatness 
more, perhaps, than we imagine. One thinks of them 
in connection with Nicodemus, who visited our Lord 
by night. And Sakuma was in a position to help 
Yoshida more practically than by simple countenance ; 
for he could read Dutch, and was eager to communi- 
cate what he knew. 

While the young Ronyin thus lay studying in Yed- 



YO SHIDA - TORAJIR 0. 179 

do, news came of a Russian ship at Nangasaki. No 
time was to be lost. Sakuma contributed " a long 
copy of encouraging verses ;" and off set Yoshida on 
foot for Nangasaki. His way lay through his own 
province of Choshu ; but, as the highroad to the south 
lay apart from the capital, he was able to avoid arrest. 
He supported himself, like a trouvtre, by his profi- 
ciency in verse. He carried his works along with him, 
to serve as an introduction. When he reached a 
town he would inquire for the house of any one cele- 
brated for swordsmanship, or poetry, or some of the 
other acknowledged forms of culture ; and there, on 
giving a taste of his skill, he would be received and 
entertained, and leave behind him, when he went 
away, a compliment in verse. Thus he travelled 
through the Middle Ages on his voyage of discovery 
into the nineteenth century. When he reached Nan- 
gasaki he was once more too late. The Russians were 
gone. But he made a profit on his journey in spite 
of fate, and stayed awhile to pick up scraps of knowl- 
edge from the Dutch interpreters — a low class of men, 
but one that had opportunities ; and then, still full of 
purpose, returned to Yeddo on foot, as he had come. 
It was not only his youth and courage that supported 
him under these successive disappointments, but the 
continual affluence of new disciples. The man had 
the tenacity of a Bruce or a Columbus, with a pliabil- 
ity that was all his own. He did not fight for what 
the world would call success ; but lor ** the wages of 
going on." Check him off in a dozen directions, he 



i 80 YOSHIDA - TORAJIRO. 

would find another outlet and break forth. He missed 
one vessel after another, and the main work still halt- 
ed ; but so long as he had a single Japanese to en- 
lighten and prepare for the better future, he could still 
feel that he was working for Japan. Now, he had 
scarce returned from Nangasaki, when he was sought 
out by a new inquirer, the most promising of all. 
This was a common soldier, of the Hemming class, a 
dyer by birth, who had heard vaguely' of Yoshida's 
movements, and had become filled with wonder as to 
their design. This was a far different inquirer from 
Sakuma-Shozan, or the councillors of the Daimio of 
Choshu. This was no tvvo-sworded gentleman, but 
the common stuff of the country, born in low tradi- 
tions and unimproved by books ; and yet that influ- 
ence, that radiant persuasion that never failed Yoshida 
in any circumstance of his short life, enchanted, en- 
thralled, and converted the common soldier, as it had 
done already with the elegant and learned. The man 
instantly burned up into a true enthusiasm ; his mind 
had been only waiting for a teacher ; he grasped in a 
moment the profit of these new ideas ; he, too, would 
go to foreign, outlandish parts, and bring back the 
knowledge that was to strengthen and renew Japan ; 



1 Yoshida, when on his way to Nangasaki, met the soldier and talked 
with him by the roadside ; they then parted, but the soldier was so much 
struck by the words he heard, that on Yoshida's return he sought him out 
and declared his intention of devoting his life to the good cause. I venture, 
in the absence of the writer, to insert this correction, having been present 
when the story was told by Mr. Masaki. — F. J. And I, there being none 
to settle the difference, must reproduce both versions. — R. L. S. 



VO SHIDA - TORAJIR 0, 1 8 1 

and in the meantime, that he might be the better pre- 
pared, Yoshida set himself to teach, and he to learn, 
the Chinese literature. It is an episode most honor- 
able to Yoshida, and yet more honorable still to the 
soldier, and to the capacity and virtue of the com- 
mon people of Japan. 

And now, at length, Commodore Perry returned to 
Simoda. Friends crowded round Yoshida with help, 
counsels, and encouragement. One presented him 
\vilh a great sword, three feet long and very heavy, 
which, in the exultation of the hour, he swore to carry 
throughout all his wanderings, and to bring back — a 
far-travelled weapon — to Japan. A long letter was 
prepared in Chinese for the American officers ; it was 
revised and corrected by Sakuma, and signed by 
Yoshida, under the name of Urinaki-Manji, and by 
the soldier under that of Ichigi-Koda. Yoshida had 
supplied himself with a "prof usion of materials for writ- 
ing ; his dress was literally stuffed with paper which 
was to come back again enriched with his observations, 
and make a great and happy kingdom of Japan. Thus 
equipped, this pair of emigrants set forward on foot 
from Yeddo, and reached Simoda about nightfall. 
At no period within history can travel have presented 
to any European creature the same face of awe and 
terror as to these courageous Japanese. The descent 
of Ulysses into hell is a parallel more near the case 
than the boldest expedition in the Polar circles. For 
their act was unprecedented ; it was criminal ; and it 
was to take them beyond the pale of humanity into a 



jt 8 2 VO SHI DA - TO RAJIR O. 

land of devils. It is not to be wondered at if the) 
were thrilled by the thought of their unusual situation ; 
and perhaps the soldier gave utterance to the senti- 
ment of both when he sang, " in Chinese singing" (so 
that we see he had already profited by his lessons), 
these two appropriate verses : 

•' We do not know where we are to sleep to-night, 
In a thousand miles of desert where we can see no human 
smoke." 

In a little temple, hard by the sea- shore, they lay 
down to repose ; sleep overtook them as they lay ; 
and when they awoke, '* the east was already white" 
for their last morning in Japan. They seized a fish- 
erman's boat and rowed out — Perry lying far to sea 
because of the two tides. Their very manner of 
boarding was significant of determination ; for they 
had no sooner caught hold upon the ship than they 
kicked away their boat to make return impossible. 
And now you would have thought that all was over. 
But the Commodore was already in treaty with the 
Shogun's Government ; it was one of the stipulations 
that no Japanese was to be aided in escaping from 
Japan ; and Yoshida and his followers were handed 
over as prisoners to the authorities at Simoda. That 
night he who had been to explore the secrets of the 
barbarian slept, if he might sleep at all, in a cell too 
short for lying down at full length, and too low for 
standing upright. There are some disappointments 
too great for commentary. 



YO SHIDA - TORAJIR O. 183 

Sakuma, implicated by his handwriting, was sent 
into his own province in confinement, from which he 
was soon released. Yoshida and the soldier suffered 
a long and miserable period of captivity, and the lat- 
ter, indeed, died, while yet in prison, of a skin dis- 
ease. But such a spirit as that of Yoshida-Torajiro is 
not easily made or kept a captive ; and that which 
cannot be broken by misfortune you shall seek in vain 
to confine in a bastille. He was indefatigably active, 
writing reports to Government and treatises for dis- 
semination. These latter were contraband ; and yet 
he found no difficulty in their distribution, for he al- 
ways had the jailer on his side. It was in vain that 
they kept changing him from one prison to another ; 
Government by that plan only hastened the spread of 
new ideas ; for Yoshida had only to arrive to make a 
convert. Thus, though he himself has laid by the 
heels, he confirmed and extended his party in the 
State. 

At last, after many lesser transferences, he was given 
over from the prisons of the Shogun to those of his 
own superior, the Daimio of Choshu. I conceive it 
posjible that he may then have served out his time for 
the attempt to leave Japan, and was now resigned to 
the provincial Government on a lesser count, as a 
Ronyin or feudal rebel. But, however that may be, 
the change was of great importance to Yoshida ; for 
by the influence of his admirers in the Daimio's 
council, he was allowed the privilege, underhand, of 
dwellins: in his own house. And there, as well to 



1 84 VO SHIDA - TORAJIKO. 

keep up communication with his fellow-reformers as 
to pursue his work of education, he received boys to 
teach. It must not be supposed that he was free ; he 
was too marked a man for that ; he was probably as- 
signed to some small circle, and lived, as we should 
say, under police sur\'eillance ; but to him, who had 
done so much from under lock and key, this would 
seem a large and profitable liberty. 

It was at this period that Mr. Masaki was brought 
into personal contact with Yoshida ; and hence, 
through the eyes of a boy of thirteen, we get one good 
look at the character and habits of the hero. He was 
ugly and laughably disfigured with the small-pox ; and 
while nature had been so niggardly with him from 
the first, his personal habits were even sluttish. His 
clothes were wretched ; when he ate or washed he 
wiped his hands upon his sleeves ; and as his hair was 
not tied more than once in the two months, it was 
often disgusdng to behold. With such a picture, it 
is easy to believe that he never married. A good 
teacher, gentle in act, although violent and abusive in 
speech, his lessons were apt to go over the heads of 
his scholars, and to leave them gaping, or more often 
laughing, Such was his passion for study that he 
even grudged himself natural repose ; and when he 
grew drowsy over his books he would, if it was sum- 
mer, put m.osquitoes up his sleeve ; and, if it was 
winter, take ofi his shoes and run barefoot on the snow. 
His handwriting was exceptionally villainous ; poet 
though he was, he had no taste for what was elegant ; 



YOSIIIDA - TORAJIRO. 1 85 

and in a country where to write beautifully was not 
the mark of a scrivener but an admired accomplish- 
ment for gentlemen, he suffered his letters to be jolted 
out of him by the press of matter and the heat of his 
convictions. He would not tolerate even the appear- 
ance of a bribe ; for bribery lay at the root of much 
that was evil in Japan, as well as in countries nearer 
home ; and once when a merchant brought him his 
son to educate, and added, as was customary,' a little 
private sweetener, Yoshida dashed the money in the 
giver's face, and launched into such an outbreak of 
indignation as made the matter public in the school. 
He was still, when Masaki knew him, much weak- 
ened by his hardships in prison ; and the presentation 
sword, three feet long, was too heavy for him to wear 
without distress ; yet he would always gird it on when 
he vv'cnt to dig in his garden. That is a touch which 
qualifies the man. A weaker nature would have 
shrunk from the sight of what only commemorated a 
failure. But he was of Thoreau's mind, that if you 
can "make your failure tragical by courage, it will 
not differ from success." He could look back with- 
out confusion to his enthusiastic promise. If events 
had been contrary, and he found himself unable to 
carry out that purpose — well, there was but the more 
reason to be brave and constant in another ; if he could 
not carry the sword into barbarian lands, it should 
at least be witness to a life spent entirely for Japan, 

^ I understood that the merchant was endeavoring surreptitiously to 
obtain for his son instruction to which he was not entitled. — F. J. 



1 86 YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO, 

This is the sight we have of him as he appeared to 
schoolboys, but not related in the schoolboy spirit. 
A man so careless of the graces must be out of court 
with boys and women. And, indeed, as we have all 
been more or less to school, it will astonish no one 
that Yoshida was regarded by his scholars as a laugh- 
ing-stock. The schoolboy has a keen sense of humor. 
Heroes he learns to understand and to admire in 
books ; but he is not forward to recognize the heroic 
under the traits of any contemporary man, and least 
of all in a brawling, dirty, and eccentric teacher. But 
as the years went by, and the scholars of Yoshida con- 
tinued in vain to look around them for the abstractly 
perfect, and began more and more to understand the 
drift of his instructions, they learned to look back 
upon their comic schoolmaster as upon the noblest of 
mankind. 

The last act of this brief and full existence was al- 
ready near at hand. Some of his work was done ; 
for already there had been Dutch teachers admitted 
into Nangasaki, and the country at large was keen for 
the new learning. But though the renaissance had 
begun, it was impeded and dangerously threatened by 
the power of the Shogun. His minister—the same 
who was afterward assassinated in the snow in the very 
midst of his bodyguard—not only held back pupils 
from going to the Dutchmen, but by spies and detec- 
tives, by imprisonment and death, kept thinning out 
of Japan the most intelligent and active spirits. It is 
the old story of a power upon its last legs— learning to 



YOSHIDA - TORAJIRO. 1 87 

the Bastille, and courage to the block ; when there 
are none left but sheep and donkeys, the State will 
have been saved. But a man must not think to cope 
with a Revolution ; nor a minister, however fortified 
with guards, to hold in check a country that had given 
birth to such men as Yoshida and his soldier follower. 
The violence of the ministerial Tarquin only served 
to direct attention to the illegality of his master's rule ; 
and people began to turn their allegiance from Yeddo 
and the Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his 
seclusion at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in con- 
sequence or not, the relations between these two rulers 
became strained ; and the Shogun' s minister set forth 
for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful sov- 
ereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipi- 
tate events. It was a piece of religion to defend the 
Mikado ; it was a plain piece of political righteous- 
ness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. 
To Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have 
arrived. He was himself still confined in Choshu. 
Nothing was free but his intelligence ; but with that 
he sharpened a sword for the Shogun' s minister. A 
party of his followers were to waylay the tyrant at a 
village on the Yeddo and Kioto road, present him 
with a petition, and put him to the sword. But 
Yoshida and his friends were closely observed ; and 
the too great expedition of two of the conspirators, a 
boy of eighteen and his brother, wakened the suspi 
cion of the authorities, and led to a full discovery of 
the plot and the arrest of all who were concerned. 



1 88 YOSHIDA - TORAJIRO. 

In Yeddo, ^o which he was taken, Yoshida wa? 
thrown again into a strict confinement. But he was 
not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour of trial. 
In the next cell lay one Kusakabe, a reformer from 
the southern highlands of Satzuma. They were in 
prison for different plots indeed, but for the same in- 
tention ; they shared the same beliefs and the same 
aspirations for Japan ; many and long were the con- 
versations they held through the prison wall, and dear 
was the sympathy that soon united them. It fell first 
to the lot of Kusakabe to pass before the judges ; and 
when sentence had been pronounced he was led toward 
the place of death below Yoshida' s window. To turn 
the head would have been to implicate his fellow- 
prisoner ; but he threw him a look from his eye, and 
bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two 
Chinese verses : — 

** It is better to be a crystal and be broken, 
Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop." 

So Kusakabe, from the highlands of Satzuma, passed 
out of the theatre of this world. His death was like 
an antique worthy's. 

A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before 
the Court. His last scene was of a piece with his 
career, and fitly crowned it. He seized on the op- 
portunity of a public audience, confessed and gloried 
in his design, and, reading his auditors a lesson in the 
history of their country, told at length the illegality of 
the Shogun's power and the crimes by which its exer- 



YOSHIDA TORAJIRO. 189 

cise was sullied. So, having said his say for once, he 
was led forth and executed, thirty-one years old. 

A military engineer, a bold traveller (at least in 
wish), a poet, a patriot, a schoolmaster, a friend to 
learning, a martyr to reform, — there are not many 
men, dying at seventy, who have served their country 
in such various characters. He was not only wise and 
provident in thought, but surely one of the fieriest of 
heroes in execution. It is hard to say which is most 
remarkable — his capacity for command, which sub- 
dued his very jailers ; his hot, unflagging zeal ; or his 
stubborn superiority to defeat. He failed in each par- 
ticular enterprise that he attempted ; and yet we have 
only to look at his country to see how complete has 
been his general success. His friends and pupils 
made the majority of leaders in that final Revolution, 
now some twelve years old ; and many of them are, 
or were until the other day, high placed among the 
rulers of Japan. And when we see all round us these 
brisk intelligent students, with their strange foreign 
air, we should nevtr lorget how Yoshida marched 
afoot from Choshu to Yeddo, and from Yeddo to 
Nangasaki, and from Nangasaki back again to Yeddo ; 
how he boarded the American ship, his dress stuffed 
with writing material ; nor how he languished in 
prison, and finally gave his death, as he had formierly 
given all his life and strength and leisure, to gain for 
his native land that very benefit which she now enjoys 
so largely. It is better to be Yoshida and perish, than 
to be only Sakuma and yet save the hide. Kusakabe, 



1 go YOSHIDA ■ TO RAJ IRQ. 

of Satzuma, has said the word : it is better to be a 
crystal and be broken. 

I must add a word ; for I hope the reader will not 
fail to perceive that this is as much the story of a 
heroic people as that of a heroic man. It is not 
enough to remember Yoshida ; we must not forget 
the common soldier, nor Kusakabe, nor the boy of 
eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness be- 
trayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the 
same days with these great hearted gentlemen. Only 
a few miles from us, to speak by the proportion of the 
universe, while I was droning over my lessons, Yoshida 
was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of 
the mosquito ; and while you were grudging a penny 
mcome tax, Kusakabe was stepping to death with a 
noble sentence on his lips. 



FRANQOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND 
HOUSEBREAKER. 

Perhaps one of the most curious revolutions in lit- 
erary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by 
M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Frangois Vil- 
lon. ^ His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter 
of biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers 
of the poet it will recall, with a flavor of satire, that 
characteristic passage in which he bequeaths his spec- 
tacles — with a humorous reservation of the case— to 
the hospital for blind paupers known as the Fifteen- 
Score. Thus equipped, let the blind paupers go and 
separate the good from the bad in the cemetery of the 
Innocents ! For his ov\^n part the poet can see no 
distinction. IMuch have the dead people made of their 
advantages. What does it matter now that they have 
lain in state beds and nourished portly bodies upon 
cakes and cream ! Here they all lie, to be trodden in 
the mud ; the large estate and the small, sounding vir- 
tue and adroit or powerful vice, in very much the same 
condition ; and a bishop not to be distinguished from 
a lamplighter with even the strongest spectacles. 

^ Etude Biographique sur Francois Villon. Paris : H. Menu. 



192 FRAN go IS VILLON, 

Such was Villon's cynical philosophy. Four hun- 
dred years after his death, when surely all danger 
might be considered at an end, a pair of critical specta- 
cles have been applied to his own remains ; and 
though he left behind him a sufficiently ragged repu- 
tation from the first, it is only after these four hundred 
years that his delinquencies have been finally tracked 
home, and we can assign him to his proper place 
among the good or wicked. It is a staggering 
thought, and one that affords a fine figure of the im- 
perishability of men's acts, that the stealth of the pri- 
vate inquiry office can be carried so far back into the 
dead and dusty past. We are not so soon quit of our 
concerns as Villon fancied. In the extreme of disso- 
lution, when not so much as a man's name is remem- 
bered, when his dust is scattered to the four winds, 
and perhaps the very grave and the very graveyard 
where he was laid to rest have been forgotten, dese- 
crated, and buried under populous towns, — even in 
this extreme let an antiquary fall across a sheet of 
manuscript, and the name will be recalled, the old in- 
famy will pop out into daylight like a toad out of a 
fissure in the rock, and the shadow of the shade of 
what was once a man will be heartily pilloried by his 
descendants. A little while ago and Villon was al- 
most totally forgotten ; then he was revived for the 
sake of his verses ; and now he is being revived with 
a vengeance in the detection o? his misdemeanors. 
How unsubstantial is this projection of a man's exist- 
ence, which can lie in abeyance for centuries and 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER. 193 

then be brushed up again and set forth for the consid- 
eration of posterity by a few dips in an antiquary's 
inkpot ! This precarious tenure of fame goes a long 
way to justify those (and they are not few) who prefer 
cakes and cream in the immediate present. 

A Wild Youth. 

Franfois de Montcorbier, alias Fran9ois des Loges, 
alias Francois Villon, alias Michel Mouton, Master of 
Arts in the University of Paris, was born in that city 
in the summer of 143 1. It was a memorable year 
for France on other and higher considerations. A 
great-hearted girl and a poor-hearted boy made, the 
one her last, the other his first appearance on the 
public stage of that unhappy country. On the 30th 
of May the ashes of Joan of Arc were thrown into the 
Seine, and on the 2d of December our Henry Sixth 
made his Joyous Entry dismally enough into disaffect- 
ed and depopulating Paris. Sword and fire still rav- 
aged the open country. On a single April Saturday 
twelve hundred persons, besides children, made their 
escape out of the starving capital. The hangman, as 
is not uninteresting to note in connection with Master 
Francis, was kept hard at work in 143 1 ; on the last 
of April and on the 4th of May alone, sixty-two 
bandits swung from Paris gibbets. ^ A more confused 
or troublous time it would have been difficult to select 
for a start in life. Not even a man's nationality was 

1 Bourgeois de Paris., ed. Pantheon, pp. 688, 689. 



194 FRAN go IS VILLON, 

certain ; for the people of Paris there was no such 
thing as a Frenchman. The English were the English 
indeed, but the French were only the Armagnacs, 
whom, with Joan of Arc at their head, they had beaten 
back from under their ramparts not two years before. 
Such public sentiment as they had centred about their 
dear Duke of Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no 
more urgent business than to keep out of their neigh- 
borhood. ... At least, and whether he liked it or 
not, our disreputable troubadour was tubbed and 
swaddled as a subject of the English crown. 

We hear nothing of Villon's lather except that he 
was poor and of mean extraction. His mother was 
given piously, which does not imply very much in an 
old Frenchwoman, and quite uneducated. He had 
an uncle, a monk in an abbey at Angers, who must 
have prospered beyond the family average, and was 
reported to be worth five or six hundred crowns. Of 
this uncle and his money-box the reader will hear 
once more. In 1448 Francis became a student of the 
University of Paris ; in 1450 he took the degree of 
Bachelor, and in 1452 that of Master of Arts. His 
bourse^ or the sum paid weekly for his board, was of 
the amount of two sous. Now two sous was about 
the price of a pound of salt butter in the bad times of 
1417 ; it was the price of half-a-pound in the worse 
times of 14 19 ; and in 1444, just four years before 
Villon joined the University, it seems to have been 
taken as the average wage for a day's manual labor. ^ 

1 Bourgeois^ pp. 627, 656, and 725. 



STUDENT, POET AND HOUSEBREAKER. 195 

In short, it cannot have been a very profuse allowance 
to keep a sharp-set lad in breakfast and supper for 
seven mortal days ; and Villon's share of the cakes 
and pastry and general good cheer, to which he is 
never weary of referring, must have been slender from 
the first. 

The educational arrangements of the University of 
Paris were, to our way of thinking, somewhat incom- 
plete. Worldly and monkish elements were presented 
in a curious confusion, which the youth might disen- 
tangle for himself. If he had an opportunity, on the 
one hand, of acquiring much hair- drawn divinity and 
a taste for formal disputation, he was put in the way 
of much gross and flaunting vice upon the other. 
The lecture room of a scholastic doctor was sometimes 
under the same roof with establishments of a very 
different and peculiarly unedifying order. The stu- 
dents had extraordinary privileges, which by all ac- 
counts they abused extraordinarily. And while some 
condemned themselves to an almost sepulchral regu- 
larity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggered 
in the street * ' with their thumbs in their girdle, ' ' passed 
the night in riot, and behaved themselves as the 
worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo in the romance of 
Notre Dame de Paris. Villon tells us himself that he 
was among the truants, but we hardly needed his 
avowal. The burlesque erudition in which he some- 
times indulged implies no more than the merest smat- 
tering of knowledge ; whereas his acquaintance with 
blackguard haunts and industries could only have been 



196 FRANCOIS VILLOiV, 

acquired by early and consistent impiety and idleness. 
He passed his degrees, it is true ; but some of us who 
have been to modern universities will make their own 
reflections on the value of the test. As for his three 
pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard Gossouyn, and Jehan 
Marceau— if they were really his pupils in any serious 
sense — what can we say but God help them ! And 
sure enough, by his own description, they turned out 
as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant as was to be looked 
for from the views and manners of their rare preceptor. 
At some time or other, before or during his uni- 
versity career, the poet was adopted by Master Guil- 
laume de Villon, chaplain of Saint Benoit-le-Betourne 
near the Sorbonne. From him he borrowed the sur- 
name by which he is known to posterity. It was most 
likely from his house, called the Porte Rouge, and 
situated in a garden in the cloister of Saint Benoit, that 
Master Francis heard the bell of the Sorbonne ring 
out the Angel us while he was finishing his Small 
Testa7nent at Christmastide in 1546. Toward this 
benefactor he usually gets credit for a respectable dis- 
play of gratitude. But with his trap and pitfall style 
of writing, it is easy to make too sure. His senti- 
ments are about as much to be relied on as those of a 
professional beggar ; and in this, as in so many other 
matters, he comes toward us whining and piping the 
eye, and goes off again with a whoop and his finger to 
his nose. Thus, he calls Guillaume de Villon his 
" more than father," thanks him with a great show of 
sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER, 197 

and bequeaths him his portion of renown. But the 
portion of renown which belonged to a young thiet, 
distinguished (if, at the period when he wrote this 
legacy, he was distinguished at all) for having written 
some more or less obscene and scurrilous ballads, 
must have been little fitted to gratify the self-respect 
or increase the reputation of a benevolent ecclesiastic. 
The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy of 
the poet's library, with specification of one work which 
was plainly neither decent nor devout. We are thus 
left on the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was 
a godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried to 
graft good principles and good behavior on this wild 
slip of an adopted son, these jesting legacies would 
obviously cut him to the heart. The position of an 
adopted son toward his adoptive father is one full of 
delicacy ; w^here a man lends his name he looks for 
great consideration. And this legacy of Villon's por- 
tion of renown may be taken as the mere fling of an 
unregenerate scapegrace who has wit enough to recog- 
nize in his own shame the readiest weapon of offence 
against a prosy benefactor's feelings. The gratitude 
of Master Francis figures, on this reading, as a fright- 
ful minus quantity. If, on the other hand, those jests 
were given and taken in good humor, the w^hole rela- 
tion between the pair degenerates into the unedifying 
complicity of a debauched old chaplain and a witty 
and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the house 
with the red door may have rung with the most mun- 
dane minstrelsy ; and it may have been below its 



198 FRANCOIS VILLON, 

roof that Villon, through a hole in the plaster, studied, 
as he tells us, the leisures of a rich ecclesiastic. 

It was, perhaps, of some moment in the poet's life 
that he should have inhabited the cloister of Saint 
Benoit. Three of the most remarkable among his 
early acquaintances are Catherine de Vausselles, for 
whom he entertained a short-lived affection and an 
enduring and most unmanly resentment ; Regnier de 
Montigny, a young blackguard of good birth ; and 
Colin de Cayeux, a fellow with a marked aptitude for 
picking locks. Now we are on a foundation of mere 
conjecture, but it is at least curious to find that two of 
the canons of Saint Benoit answered respectively to 
the names of Pierre de Vaucel and Etienne de Mon- 
tigny, and that there was a householder called Nicolas 
de Cayeux in a street — the Rue des Poirees — in the 
immediate neighborhood of the cloister. M. Long- 
non IS almost ready to identify Catherine as the niece 
of Pierre ; Regnier as the nephew of Etienne, and 
Colin as the son of Nicolas. Without going so far, it 
must be owned that the approximation of names is 
significant. As we go on to see the part played by 
each of these persons in the sordid melodrama of the 
poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even more 
notable. Is it not Clough who has remarked that, 
after all, everything lies in juxtaposition ? Many a 
man's destiny has been settled by nothing apparently 
more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of 
the street and a couple of bad companions round the 
corner. 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER. 199 

Catherine de Vausselles (or de Vaucel — the change 
is within the Hmits of Villon's license) had plainly 
delighted in the poet's conversation ; near neighbors 
or not, they were much together ; and Villon made 
no secret of his court, and suffered himself to believe 
that his feeling was repaid in kind. This may have 
been an error from the first, or he may have estranged 
her by subsequent misconduct or temerity. One can 
easily imagine Villon an impatient wooer. One thing, 
at least, is sure : that the affair terminated in a man- 
ner bitterly humiliating to Master Francis. In pres- 
ence of his lady-love, perhaps under her window and 
certainly with her connivance, he was unmercifully 
thrashed by one Noe le Joly — beaten, as he says him- 
self, like dirty linen on the washmg-board. It is char- 
acteristic that his malice had notably increased between 
the time when he wrote the Small Testament imme- 
diately on the back of the occurrence, and the time 
when he wrote the Large Testament five years after. 
On the latter occasion nothing is too bad for his 
" damsel with the twisted nose," as he calls her. She 
is spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his 
messenger to accost her with the vilest insults. Vil- 
lon, it is thought, was out of Paris v/hen these ameni- 
ties escaped his pen ; or perhaps the strong arm of 
Noe le Joly would have been again in requisition. 
So ends the love story, if love story it may properly be 
called. Poets are not necessarily fortunate in love ; but 
they usually fall among more romantic circumstances 
and bear their disappointment with a better grace. 



200 FRANQOIS VILLON, 

The neighborhood of Regnier de Montigny and 
Colin de Cayeux was probably more influential on his 
after life than the contempt of Catherine„ For a man 
who is greedy of all pleasures, and provided with little 
money and less dignity of character, we may prophesy 
a safe and speedy voyage downward. Humble or 
even truckling virtue may walk unspotted in this life. 
But only those who despise the pleasures can afford to 
despise the opinion of the world. A man of a strong, 
heady temperament, like Villon, is very differently 
tempted. His eyes lay hold on all provocations 
greedily, and his heart flames up at a look into im- 
perious desire ; he is snared and broached to by any- 
thing and everything, from a pretty face to a piece of 
pastry in a cookshop window ; he will drink the rins- 
ing of the wine cup, stay the latest at the tavern party ; 
tap at the lit windows, follow the sound of singing, 
and beat the whole neighborhood for another reveller, 
as he goes reluctantly homeward ; and grudge himself 
every hour of sleep as a black empty period in which 
he cannot follow after pleasure. Such a person is lost 
if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride, 
which is its shadow and in many ways its substitute. 
Master Francis, I fancy, would follow his own eager 
mstincts without much spiritual struggle. And we 
soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal 
earnest, and counting as acquaintances the most dis- 
reputable people he could lay his hands on : fellows 
who stole ducks in Paris Moat ; sergeants of the crim- 
inal court, and archers of the watch ; blackguards who 



S T UDEN 7\ F OE T, A ND HO USEE RE A KER. 2 o i 

«lept at night under the butchers' stalls, and for whom 
the aforesaid archers peered about carefully with lan- 
terns ; Rej^nier de Montigny, Colin de Cayeux, and 
their crew, all bound on a favoring breeze toward the 
gallows ; the disorderly abbess of Port Royal, who 
went about at lair time with soldiers and thieves, and 
conducted her abbey on the queerest principles ; and 
most likely Perelte Mauger, the great Paris receiver of 
stolen goods, not yet dreaming, poor woman 1 of the 
last scene of her career when Henry Cousin, executor 
of the high justice, shall bury her, alive and most re- 
luctant, in front of the new Montigny gibbet.^ Nay, 
our friend soon began to take a foremost rank in this 
society. He could string off verses, which is always 
an agreeable talent ; and he could make himself use- 
ful in many other ways. The whole ragged army of 
Bohemia, and whosoever loved good cheer without at 
all loving to work and pay for it, are addressed in con- 
temporary verses as the '* Subjects of Franyois Vil- 
lon. " He was a good genius to all hungry and un- 
scrupulous persons ; and became the hero of a whole 
legendary cycle of tavern tricks and cheateries. At 
best, these were doubtful levities, rather too thievish 
for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a thief. But 
he would not linger long in this equivocal borderland. 
He must soon have complied with his surroundings. 
He was one who would go where the cannikin clinked, 
not caring who should pay ; and from supping in the 
wolves' den, there is but a step to hunting with the 

' Chron'ique Scandaleuse^ ed. Pantheon, p. 237. 



2 02 FRAN(^01S VILLON, 

pack. And here, as I am on the chapter of his deg- 
radation, 1 shall say all I mean to say about its dark- 
est expression, and be done with it for good. Some 
charitable critics see no more than a jeu d' esprit, a 
graceful and trifling exercise of the imagination, in the 
grimy ballad of Fat Peg {Grosse Mar got). I am not 
able to follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. 
Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in 
flaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in 
a contraction of disgust. M. Longnon shows us more 
and more clearly at every page that we are to read 
our poet literally, that his names are the names of 
real persons, and the events he chronicles were actual 
events. But even if the tendency of criticism had run 
the other way, this ballad would have gone far to 
prove itself. I can well understand the reluctance of 
worthy persons in this matter ; for of course it is un^ 
pleasant to think of a man of genius as one who held, 
in the words of Marina to Boult — 

" A place, for which the pained"* st fiend 
Of hell would not in reputation change." 

But beyond this natural unwillingness, the whole 
difficulty of the case springs from a highly virtuous 
ignorance of life. Paris now is not so different from 
the Paris of then ; and the whole of the doings of Bo- 
hemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals of 
Murger. It is really not at all surprising that a young 
man of the fifteenth century, with a knack of making 
verses, should accept his bread upon disgraceful terms 



STUD EN T, POET, A ND HO USEBREAKER. 2 o. 

The race of those who do is not extinct ; and som; 
of them to this day write the prettiest verses imagin- 
able. . . . After this, it were impossible for Master 
Francis to fall lower : to go and steal for himself 
would be an admirable advance from every point of 
view, divine or human. 

And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide, that 
he makes his first appearance before angry justice. 
On June 5, 1455, when he was about twenty-four, 
and had been Master of Arts for a matter of three 
years, we behqld him for the first time quite definitely. 
Angry justice had, as it were, photographed him in 
the act of his homicide ; and M. Longnon, rummag- 
ing among old deeds, has turned up the negative and 
printed it off for our instruction. Villon had been 
supping — copiously we may believe — and sat on a 
stone bench in front of the Church of St. Benoit, in 
company with a priest called Gilles and a woman of 
the name of Isabeau. "It was nine o'clock, a mighty 
late hour for the period, and evidently a fine summer's 
night. Master Francis carried a mantle, like a pru- 
dent man, to keep him from the dews [serairi), and 
had a sword below it dangling from his girdle. So 
these three dallied in front of St. Benoit, taking their 
pleasure [pour soy esbatre). Suddenly there arrived 
upon the scene a priest, Philippe Chermoye or Ser- 
maise, also with sword and cloak, and accompanied 
by one Master Jehan le Mardi. Sermaise, according 
to Villon's account, which is all we have to go upon, 
came up blustering and denying God ; as Villon rose 



204 FRANQOIS VILLON, 

to make room for him upon the bench, thrust him 
rudely back into his place ; and finally drew his sword 
and cut open his lower lip, by what I should imagine 
was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point, Villon 
professes to have been a model of courtesy, even of 
leebleness : and the brawl, in his version, reads like 
the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the 
lamb was roused ; he drew his sword, stabbed Sermaise 
in the groin, knocked him on the head with a big 
stone, and then, leaving him to his fate, went away to 
have his own lip doctored by a barber of the name of 
Fouquet. In one version, he says that Gilles, Isa- 
beau, and Le Mardi ran away at the first high words, 
and that he and Sermaise had it out alone ; in an- 
other, Le Mardi is represented as returning and wrest- 
ing Villon's sword from him : the reader may please 
himself. Sermaise was picked up, lay all that night 
in the prison of Saint Benoit, where he was examined 
by an official of the Chatelet and expressly pardoned 
Villon, and died on the following Saturday in the 
Hotel Dieu. 

This, as I have said, was in June. Not before Jan- 
uary of the next year could Villon extract a pardon 
from the king ; but while his hand was in, he got 
two. One is for ' ' Frangois des Loges, alias {autre- 
merit dit) de Villon ;" and the other runs in the name 
of Francois de Montcorbier. Nay, it appears there 
was a further complication ; for in the narrative of the 
first of these documents, it is mentioned that he passed 
himself off upon Fouquet, the barber-surgeon, as one- 



S T UDEN T, PO£T,A ND HO USEE RE A KER. 205 

Michel Mouton. M. Longnon has a theory that this 
unhappy accident with Sermaise was the cause of Vil- 
lon's subsequent irregularities ; and that up to that 
moment he had been the pink of good behavior. But 
the matter has to my eyes a more dubious air. A 
pardon necessary for Des Loges and another for 
Montcorbier ? and these two the same person ? and 
one or both of them known by the alias of Villon, 
however honestly come by ? and lastly, in the heat of 
the moment, a fourth name thrown out with an as- 
sured countenance ? A ship is not to be trusted that 
sails under so many colors. This is not the simple 
bearing of innocence. No — the young master was 
already treading crooked paths ; already, he would 
start and blench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the 
look we know so well in the face of Hogarth's Idle 
Apprentice ; already, in the blue devils, he would 
see Henry Cousin, the executor of high justice, go- 
ing in dolorous procession toward Montfaucon, and 
hear the wind and the birds crying around Paris gibbet. 

A Gang of Thieves. 

In spite of the prodigious number of people who 
managed to get hanged, the fifteenth century was by 
no means a bad time for criminals. A great confu- 
sion of parties and great dust of fighting favored the 
escape of private housebreakers and quiet fellows 
who stole ducks in Paris Moat. Prisons were leaky ; 
and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his 
pocket and perhaps some acquaintance among the 



2o6 FRANqOIS VILLON, 

officials, could easily slip out and become once more 
a free marauder. There was no want of a sanctuary 
where he might harbor until troubles blew by ; and 
accomplices helped each other with more or less good 
faith. Clerks, above all, had remarkable facilities for 
a criminal way of life ; for they were privileged, ex- 
cept in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be plucked 
from the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a 
tribunal of their own. In 1402, a couple of thieves, 
both clerks of the University, were condemned to death 
by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken to Mont- 
faucon, they kept crying ' ' high and clearly ' ' for their 
benefit of clergy, but were none the less pitilessly 
hanged and gibbeted. Indignant Alma Mater inter- 
fered before the king ; and the Provost was deprived 
of all royal offices, and condemned to return the 
bodies and erect a great stone cross, on the road from 
Paris to the gibbet, graven with the effigies of these two 
holy martyrs. ' We shall hear more of the benefit of 
clergy ; for after this the reader will not be surprised 
to meet with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, 
or even priests and monks. 

To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly 
belonged ; and by turning over a few more of M. Long- 
non's negatives, we shall get a clear idea of their 
character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are 
names already known ; Guy Tabary, Petit- Jehan, 
Dom Nicolas, little Thibault, who was both clerk and 
goldsmith, and who made picklocks and melted plate 

' JMonstrelet : Panthdon Littdraire, p. 26. 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER, 207 

for himself and his companions — with these the reader 
has still to become acquainted. Petit- Jehan and De 
Cayeux were handy fellows and enjoyed a useful pre- 
eminence in honor of their doings with the picklocl^. 
" Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum^'' 
says Tabary's interrogation, "" sed dictus Peiit-Jeha7i, 
ejus socius, est /or cms operator.'' But the flower of 
the flock was little Thibault ; it was reported that no 
lock could stand before him ; he had a persuasive 
hand ; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. 
Perhaps the term gang is not quite properly applied 
to the persons whose fortunes we are now about to 
follow ; rather they were independent malefactors, 
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for 
some serious operation, just as modern stockjobbers 
form a syndicate for an important loan. Nor were 
they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. 
They did not scrupulously confme themselves to a 
single sort of theft, as I hear is common among modern 
thieves. They were ready for anything, from pitch- 
and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, 
had neglected neither of these extremes, and we find 
him accused of cheating at games of hazard on the one 
hand, and on the other of the murder of one Thevenin 
Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If 
time had only spared us some particulars, might not 
this last have furnished us with the matter of a grisly 
winter' s tale ? 

At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will rt> 
inember that he was en'^a2^ed on the Small Testamenf. 



zoS ^J^ANfO/S FILLOJV, 

About the same period, circa festum nativitaiis DoTnvm^ 
he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule 
Tavern, in iront of the Church oi St. Mathurin. 
Tabary, who seems to have been y^xy much Villon's 
creature, had ordered the supper in the course oi the. 
afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles ir^ 
his time and languished in the Bishop of Paris' s 
prisons on a suspicion oi picking locks ; confiding, 
convivial, not very astute — who had copied out a 
v/hole improper romance with his own right hand. 
This supper-party was to be his first introduction to 
De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan, which was probably a 
matter of some concern to the poor man's muddy 
wits ; in the sequel, at least, he speaks of both with 
an undisguised respect, based on professional inferior- 
ity in the matter of picklocks. Dom Nicolas, a Pic- 
ardy mxonk, was the fifth and last at table. When 
supper had been despatched and fairly washed down» 
we may suppose, with white Baigneux or red Beaune, 
which were favorite winesamong the fellowship, Tabary 
was solemnly sworn over to secrecy on the night's per- 
formances ; and the party left the IMule and proceeded 
to an unoccupied house belonging- to Robert de Saint- 
Simon. This, over a low wall, they entered without 
difficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper gar- 
ments ; a ladder was found and applied to the high 
wall which separated Saint-Simon's house from the 
court of the College of Navarre ; the four fellows in 
Iheir shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over 
in a twinkling ; and ]^Iaster Guy Tabary remained 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER. 209 

alone beside the overcoats. From the court the burg- 
lars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where 
they found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands 
and closed with four locks. One of these locks they 
picked, and then, by levering up the corner, forced 
the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut 
wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only 
three locks, which were all comfortably picked by way 
of the keyhole. In the walnut coffer — a joyous sight 
by our thieves' lantern — were five hundred crowns of 
^•old. There was some talk of opening the aumries, 
where, if they had only known, a booty eight or nine 
times greater lay ready to their hand ; but one of the 
party (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nico- 
las, the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was 
ten o'clock when they mounted the ladder ; it was 
about midnight befory Tabary beheld them coming 
back. To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a 
share of a two- crown dinner on the morrow ; whereat 
we may suppose his mouth watered. In course of 
time, he got wind of the real amount of their booty 
and understood how scurvily he had been used ; but 
he seems to have borne no malice. How could he, 
against such superb operators as Petit- Jehan and De 
Cayeux ; or a person like Villon, who could have 
made a new improper romance out of his own head, 
instead of merely copying an old one with mechanical 
right hand ? 

The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the 
gang. First they made a demonstration against the 



2IO FRANQOTS VILLON, 

Church of St. Mathurin after chaHces, and were ig- 
nominiously chased away by barking dogs. Then 
Tabary fell out with Casin Chollet, one of the fellows 
who stole ducks in Paris Moat, who subsequently be- 
came a sergeant of the Chatelet and distinguished 
himself by misconduct, followed by imprisonment and 
public castigation, during the wars of Louis Eleventh. 
The quarrel was not conducted with a proper regard 
to the kmg's peace, and the pair publicly belabored 
each other until the police stepped in, and Master 
Tabary was cast once more into the prisons of the 
Bishop. While he still lay in durance, another job 
was cleverly executed by the band in broad daylight, 
at the Augustine Monastery. Brother Guillaume 
Coifher was beguiled by an accomplice to St. Mathu- 
rin to say mass ; and during his absence, his chamber 
was entered and five or six hundred crowns in money 
and some silver plate successfully abstracted. A mel- 
ancholy man was Coiffier on his return ! Eight crowns 
from this adventure were forwarded by little Thibault 
to the incarcerated Tabary ; and with these he bribed 
the jailer and reappeared in Paris taverns. Some time 
before or shortly after this, Villon set out for Angers, 
as he had promised in the Small Testamenl. The 
object of this excursion was not merely to avoid the 
presence of his cruel mistress or the strong arm of 
Noe le Joly, but to plan a deliberate robbery on his 
uncle the monk. As soon as he had properly studied 
the ground, the others were to go over in force from 
Paris — picklocks and all — and away with my uncle's 



STUDENT, POE T, AND HO USEBREAKER. 2 1 1 

Strongbox ! This throws a comical sidelight on his 
own accusation against his relatives, that they had 
" forgotten natural duty" and disowned him because 
he was poor. A poor relation is a distasteful circum- 
stance at the best, but a poor relation who plans de- 
liberate robberies against those of his blood, and 
trudges hundreds of weary leagues to put them into 
execution, is surely a little on the wrong side of tolera- 
tion. The uncle at Angers may have been mon- 
strously undutiful ; but the nephew from Paris was 
upsides with him. 

On the 23d April, that venerable and discreet per- 
son, T»*Iaster Pierre Marchand, Curate and Prior of 
Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of Chartres, arrived in 
Paris and put up at the sign of the Three Chandeliers, 
in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the day 
after, as he was breakfasting at the sign of the Arm- 
chair, he fell into talk, with two customers, one of 
whom was a priest and the other our friend Tabary. 
The idiotic Tabary became mighty confidential as to 
his past life. Pierre INIarchand, who was an acquaint- 
ance of Guillaume Coifher's and had sympathized 
with him over his loss, pricked up his ears at the 
mention of picklocks, and led on the transcriber of 
improper romances from one thing to another, until 
they were fast friends. For picklocks the Prior of 
Paray professed a keen curiosity ; but Tabary, upon 
some late alarm, had thrown all his into the Seine. 
Let that be no difficulty, however, for was there not 
little Thibault, who could make them of all shapes 



212 FRANQOIS VILLON, 

and sizes, and to whom Tabary, smelling an accom- 
plice, would be only too glad to introduce his new ac- 
quaintance ? On the morrow, accordingly, they met ; 
and Tabary, after having first wet his whistle at the 
Prior's expense, led him to Notre Dame and presented 
him to four or five " young companions," who were 
keeping sanctuary in the church. They were all 
clerks, recently escaped, like Tabary himself, from the 
episcopal prisons. Among these we may notice Thi- 
bault, the operator, a litde fellow of twenty-six, wear- 
ing long hair behind. The Prior expressed, through 
Tabary, his anxiety to become their accomplice and 
altogether such as they were [de leur sorte et de leurs 
complices). Mighty polite they showed themselves, 
and made him many fine speeches in return. But 
for all that, perhaps because they had longer heads 
than Tabary, perhaps because it is less easy to wheedle 
men in a body, they kept obstinately to generalities 
and gave him no information as to their exploits, past, 
present, or to come. I suppose Tabary groaned under 
this reserve ; for no sooner were he and the Prior 
out of the church than he fairly emptied his heart to 
him, gave him full details of many hanging matters in 
the past, and explained the future intentions of the 
band. The scheme of the hour was to rob another 
Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte, and in this the 
Prior agreed to take a hand with simulated greed. 
Thus, in the course of two days, he had turned this 
wineskin of a Tabary inside out. For a while longer 
the farce was carried on ; the Prior was introduced to 



STUDEKT, POE T, A ND HOUSEBREAKER. 2 1 3 

Petit-Jehan, whom be describes as a little, very smart 
man of thirty, with a black beard and a short jacket ; 
an appointment was made and broken in the de la 
Porte affair ; Tabary had some breakfast at the Prior's 
charge and leaked out more secrets under the influ- 
ence of wine and friendship ; and then all of a sud' 
den, on the 1 7th of May, an alarm^ sprang up, the 
Prior picked up his skirts and walked quietly over to 
the Chatelet to make a deposition, and the whole 
band took to their heels and vanished out of Paris and 
the sight of the police. 

Vanish as they like, they all %o with a clog about 
their feet. Sooner or later, here or there, they will 
be caught in the fact, and ignominiously sent home. 
From our vantage of four centuries afterward, it is odd 
and pitiful to watch the order in which the fugitives 
are captured and dragged in. 

Montigny was the first. In August of that same 
year, he was laid by " the heels on many grievous 
counts ; sacrilegious robberies, frauds, incorrigibility, 
and that bad business about Thevenin Pensete in the 
house by the Cemetery of St. John. He was reclaimed 
by the ecclesiastical authorities as a clerk ; but the 
claim was rebutted on the score of incorrigibility, and 
ultimately fell to the ground ; and he was condemned 
to death by the Provost of Paris. It was a very rude 
hour for Montigny, but hope was not yet over. He 
was a fellow of some birth ; his father had been king's 
pander ; his sister, probably married to some one 
about the Court, was in the family way, and her health 



214 FRANCOIS VILLON, 

would be endangered if the execution was proceeded 
with. So down comes Charles the Seventh with let- 
ters of mercy, commuting the penalty to a year in a 
dungeon on bread and water, and a pilgrimage to the 
shrine of St. James in Galicia. Alas I the document 
was incomplete ; it did not contain the full tale of 
Montigny's enormities ; it did not recite that he had 
been denied benefit of clergy, and it said nothing 
about Thevenin Pensete. Montigny's hour was at 
hand. Benefit of clergy, honorable descent from 
king's pantler, sister in the family way, royal letters 
of commutation — all were of no avail. He had been 
in prison in Rouen, in Tours, in Bordeaux, and four 
times already in Paris ; and out of all these he had 
come scathless ; but now he must make a little ex- 
cursion as far as Montfaucon with Henry Cousin, ex- 
ecutor of high justice. There let him swing among 
the carrion crows. 

About a year later, in July 1458, the police laid 
hands on Tabary. Before the ecclesiastical commis- 
sary he was twice examined, and, on the latter occa- 
sion, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary. 
What a dismal change from pleasant suppers at the 
Mule, where he sat in triumph with expert operators 
and great wits 1 He is at the lees of life, poor rogue ; 
and those fingers which once transcribed improper 
romances are now agonizingly stretched upon the rack. 
We have no sure knowledge, but we may have a 
shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, 
>vould go the same way as those whom he admired. 



S T UDEN 7\ FOE T, A ND HO USEE RE A KER. 2 1 5 

The last we hear of is CoHn de Cayeux. He was 
caught in autumn 1460, in the great Church of St. 
Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in the 
pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont. 
He was reclaimed bv no less than two bishops ; but 
the Procureur for the Provost held fast by incorrigible 
Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year : for justice was 
making a clean sweep of " poor and indigent persons, 
thieves, cheats, and lockpickers," in the neighbor- 
hood of Paris ;' and Colin de Cayeux, with many 
others, was condemned to death and hanged.^ 

Villon and the Gallows. 

Villon was still absent on the Angers expedition 
when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell 
among his accomplices ; and the dates of his return 
and arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux 
plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457, 
which would make him closely follow on Montigny, 
and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall 
into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was 
not long thereafter ; we may suppose him competed 
for between lay and clerical Courts ; and we may sup- 
pose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and 



^ Chron. Scand. ut supra. 

2 Here and there, principally in the order of events, this article differs 
from M. Longnon's own reading of his material. The ground on which he 
defers the execution of Montigny and De Cayeux beyond the date of their 
trials seems insufficient. There is a law of parsimony for the construction 
of historical documents ; simplicity is the first duty of narration ; and 
hanged they were. 



2i6 FRANQOIS VILLON, 

fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all sup- 
posing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For 
first, he was put to the question by water. He who 
had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red 
Beaune, now drank water through linen folds, until 
his bowels were flooded and his heart stood still. 
After so much raising of the elbow, so much outcry of 
fictitious thirst, here at last was enough drinking for 
a lifetime. Truly, of our pleasant vices, the gods 
make whips to scourge us. And secondly he was 
condemned to be hanged. A man may have been 
expecting a catastrophe for years, and yet find himself 
unprepared when it arrives. Certainly, Villon found, 
in this legitimate issue of his career, a very staggering 
and grave consideration. Every beast, as he says, 
clings bitterly to a whole skin. If everything is lost, 
and even honor, life still remains ; nay, and it be- 
comes, like the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear 
as all the rest. " Do you fancy," he asks, in a lively 
ballad, " that I had not enough philosophy under my 
hood to cry out : ' I appeal ' .? If I had made any 
bones about the matter, I should have been planted 
upright in the fields, by the St. Denis Road " — Mont- 
faucon being on the way to St. Denis. An appeal to 
Parliament, as we saw in the case of Colin de Cayeux, 
did not necessarily lead to an acquittal or a commu- 
tation ; and while the matter was pending, our poet 
had ample opportunity to reflect on his position. 
Hanging is a sharp argument, and to swing with many 
others on the gibbet adds a horrible corollary for the 



S TUDEN 7\ POE T, A ND HO USEBREAKER. 2 1 7 

imagination. With the aspect of Montfaucon he was 
well acquainted ; indeed, as the neighborhood appears 
to have been sacred to junketing and nocturnal picnics 
of wild young men and women, he had probably 
studied it under all varieties of hour and weather. 
And now, as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, 
these difierent aspects crowded back on his imagina- 
tion with a new and startling significance ; and he 
wrote a ballad, by way of epitaph for himself and his 
companions, which remains unique in the annals of 
mankind. It is, in the highest sense, a piece of his 
biography : — 

" La pluye nous a debuez et lavez, 
Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz ; 
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, 
Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz. 
Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes rassis ; 
Puis 9a, puis li, comme le vent varie, 
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie, 
Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez i couldre. 
Ne soyez done de nostre confrairie, 
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre." 

Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so 
much that was spurious ; sharp as an etching, written 
with a shuddering soul. There is an intensity of con- 
sideration in the piece that shows it to be the transcript 
of familiar thoughts. It is the quintessence of many 
a doleful nightmare on the straw, when he felt himself 
swing helpless in the wind, and saw the birds turn 
about him, screaming and menacing his eyes. 



2iS FRAN(:OIS VILLON, 

And, after all, the Parliament changed his sentence 
into one of banishment ; and to Roussillon, in Dau- 
phiny, our poet must carry his woes without delay. 
Travellers between Lyons and Marseilles may remem- 
ber a station on the line, some way below Vienne, 
where the Rhone fleets seaward between vine-clad hills. 
This was Villon's Siberia. It would be a little warm 
in summer perhaps, and a little cold in winter in tha* 
draughty valley between two great mountain fields ; 
but what with the hills, and the racing river, and the 
fiery Rhone wines, he was little to be pitied on the 
conditions of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably bad 
ballad, written in a breath, heartily thanked and ful- 
somely belauded the Parliament ; the envoi, like the 
proverbial postscript of a lady's letter, containing the 
pith of his performance in a request for three days' 
delay to settle his affairs and bid his friends farewell. 
He was probably not followed out of Paris, like An- 
toine Fradin, the popular preacher, another exile of a 
few years later, by weeping multitudes ;' but I dare say 
one or two rogues of his acquaintance would keep 
him company for a mile or so on the south road, and 
drink a bottle with him before they turned. For 
banished people, in those days, seem to have set out 
on their own responsibility, in their own guard, and 
at their own expense. It was no joke to make one's 
way from Paris to Roussillon alone and penniless in 
the fifteenth century. Villon says he left a rag of his 
tails on every bush. Indeed, he must have had mary 

1 Chron. Scand., p. 338. 



STUDENT, FOE T, AND HO USEBREAKER. 2 19 

a wear}'' tramp, many a slender meal, and many a to- 
do with blustering captains of the Ordonnance. But 
with one of his light fingers, we may fancy that he took 
as good as he gave ; for every rag of his tail, he would 
manage to indemnify himself upon the population in 
the shape of food, or wine, or ringing money ; and 
his route would be traceable across France and Bur- 
gundy by housewives and inn-keepers lamenting over 
petty thefts, like the track of a single human locust. 
A strange figure he must have cut in the eyes of the 
good country people : this ragged, blackguard city 
poet, with a smack of the Paris student, and a smack 
of the Paris street arab, posting along the highways, 
in rain or sun, among the green fields and vineyards. 
For himself, he had no taste for rural loveliness ; 
green fields and vineyards would be mighty indifferent 
to Master Francis ; but he would often have his tongue 
in his cheek at the simplicity of rustic dupes, and 
often, at city gates, he might stop to contemplate the 
gibbet with its swinging bodies, and hug himself on 
his escape. 

How long he stayed at Roussillon, how far he be- 
camie the protege of the Bourbons, to whom that town 
belonged, or when it was that he took part, under the 
auspices of Charles of Orleans, in a rhyming tourna- 
ment to be referred to once again in the pages of the 
present volume, are matters that still remain in dark- 
ness, in spite of M. Longnon's diligent rummaging 
among archives. When we next find him, in sum- 
mer 146 1, alas ! he is once more in durance : this 



220 FRANCOIS VILLON, 

time at Meun-sur-Loire, in the prisons of Thibault 
d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans. He had been low- 
ered in a basket into a noisome pit, where he lay, all 
summer, gnawing hard crusts and railing upon fate. 
His teeth, he says, were like the teeth of a rake : a 
touch of haggard portraiture all the more real for be- 
ing excessive and burlesque, and all the more proper 
to the man for being a caricature of his own misery. 
His eyes were "bandaged with thick walls." It 
might blow hurricanes overhead ; the lightning might 
leap in high heaven ; but no word of all this reached 
him in his noisome i)it. *' Iln'entre, ou gist, n'escler 
ni tourbillon." Above all, he was fevered with envy 
and anger at the freedom of others ; and his heart 
flowed over into curses as he thought of Thibault 
d'Aussigny, walking the streets in God's sunlight, and 
blessing people with extended fingers. So much we 
find sharply lined in his own poems. Why he was 
cast again into prison — how he had again managed to 
shave the gallows — this we know not, nor, from the 
destruction of authorities, are we ever likely to learn. 
But on October 2d, 1461, or some day immediately 
preceding, the new King, Louis Eleventh, made his 
joyous entry into Meun. Now it was a part of the 
formality on such occasions for the new I^ing to liber- 
ate certain prisoners ; and so the basket was let down 
into Villon's pit, and hastily did Master Francis 
scramble in, and was most joyfully hauled up, and 
shot out, blinking and tottering, but once more a free 
man, into the blessed sun and wind. Now or never 



S r UDEN T, POET, A ND HO USEE RE A KER. 2 2 1 

is the time for verses ! Such a happy revolution 
would turn the head of a stocking- weaver, and set him 
iin.o^ling rhymes. And so — after a voyage to Paris, 
where he finds Montigny and De Cayeux clattering 
their bones upon the gibbet, and his three pupils roi- 
stering in Paris streets, " with their thumbs under 
their girdles," — down sits Master Francis to write his 
Large Testament, and perpetuate his name in a sort 
of glorious ignominy. 

The Large Testament. 
Of this capital achievement and, with it, of V^il- 
lon's style in general, it is here the place to speak. 
The Large Teslament is a hurly-burly of cynical and 
sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies to 
friends and enemies, and, interspersed among these 
many admirable ballades, both serious and absurd. 
With so free a design, no thought that occurred to 
him would need to be dismissed without expression ; 
and he could draw at full length the portrait of his 
own bedevilled soul, and of the bleak and blackguardly 
world which was the theatre of his exploits and suffer- 
ings. If the reader can conceive something between 
the slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's Don Juan and 
the racy humorous gravity and brief noble touches 
that distinguish the vernacular poems of Burns, he 
will have formed some idea of Villon's style. To the 
latter writer — except in the ballades, which are quite 
his own, and can be paralleled from no other language 
known to me — he bears a particular resemblance. In 



222 FRANQOIS VILLON, 

common with Bums he has a certain rugged com- 
pression, a brutal vivacity of epithet, a homely vigor, 
a delight in local personalities, and an interest in 
many sides of life, that are often despised and passed 
over by more effete and cultured poets. Both also, 
in their strong, easy colloquial way, tend to become 
difficult and obscure ; the obscurity in the case of 
Villon passing at times into the absolute darkness ot 
cant language. They are perhaps the only two great 
masters of expression who keep sending their readers 
to a glossary. 

" Shall we not dare to say of a thief," asks Mon- 
taigne, "that he has a handsome leg.?" It is a far 
more serious claim that we have to put forward in be- 
half of Villon. Beside that of his contemporaries, 
his writing, so full of color, so eloquent, so pictu- 
resque, stands out in an almost miraculous isolation. 
If only one or two of the chroniclers could have taken 
a leaf out of his book, history would have been a pas- 
time, and the fifteenth century as present to our minds 
as the age of Charles Second. This gallows-bird was 
the one great writer of his age and country, and ini- 
tiated modern literature for France. Boileau, long 
ago, in the period of perukes and snuff-boxes, recog- 
nized him as the first articulate poet in the language ; 
and if we measure him, not by priority of merit, but 
living duration of influence, not on a comparison with 
obscure forerunners, but with great and famous suc- 
cessors, we shall install this ragged and disreputable 
figure in a far higher niche in glory's temple than was 



S T UDEN T, POET, A AW HO USEBREA KER. 223 

ever dreamed of by the critic. It is, in itself, a 
memorable fact that, before 1542, in the very dawn of 
piinting, and while modern France was in the mak- 
ing, the works of Villon ran through seven different 
editions. Out of him flows much of Rabelais ; and 
through Rabelais, directly and indirectly, a deep, 
permanent, and growing inspiration. Not only his 
style, but his callous pertinent way of looking upon 
the Sordid and ugly sides of life, becomes everv day 
a more specific feature in the literature of France. 
And oiily the other year, a work of some power ap- 
pearea in Paris, and appeared with infinite scandal, 
which owed its whole inner significance and much of 
its outward form to the study of our rhyming thief. 

The world to which he introduces us is, as before 
said, blackguardly and bleak. Paris swarms before 
us, full of famine, shame, and death ; monks and the 
servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes 
and pastry ; the poor man licks his lips before the 
baker's window ; people with patched eyes sprawl all 
night under the stalls ; chuckling Tabary transcribes 
an improper romance ; bare-bosomed lasses and ruffiing 
students swagger in the streets ; the drunkard goes 
stumbling homeward ; the graveyard is full of bones ; 
and away on Montfaucon, Colin de Cayeux and Mon- 
tigny hang draggled in the rain. Is there nothing 
better to be seen than sordid misery and worthless 
joys ? Only where the poor old mother of the poet 
kneels in church below painted windows, and makes 
tremulous supplication to the Mother of God. 



224 FRAN(;OIS VILLON, 

In our mixed world, full of green fields and happy 
lovers, where not long before, Joan of Arc had led 
one of the highest and noblest lives in the whole story 
of mankind, this was all worth chronicling that our 
poet could perceive. His eyes were indeed sealed 
with his own filth. He dwelt all his life in a pit more 
noisome than the dungeon at Meun. In the moral 
world, also, there are large phenomena not cognizable 
out of holes and corners. Loud winds blow, speed- 
ing home deep-laden ships and sweeping rubbish 
from the earth ; the lightning leaps and cleans the 
face of heaven ; high purposes and brave passions 
shake and sublimate men's spirits ; and meanwhile, 
in the narrow dungeon of his soul, Villon is mumbling 
crusts and picking vermin. 

Along with this deadly gloom of outlook, we must 
take another characteristic of his work : its unrivalled 
insincerity. I can give no better similitude of this 
quality than I have given already : that he comes up 
v/ith a whine, and runs away with a whoop and his 
finger to his nose. His pathos is that of a profes- 
sional mendicant who should happen to be a man of 
genius ; his levity that of a bitter street arab. full ol 
bread. On a first reading, the pathetic passages pre- 
occupy the reader, and he is cheated out of an alms 
in the shape of sympathy. But when the thing is 
studied the illusion fades away : in the transitions, 
above all, we can detect the evil, ironical temper of 
the man ; and instead of a flighty work, where many 
crude but genuine feelings tumble together for the 



STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER. 225 

mastery as in the lists of tournament, we are tempted 
to think of the Large Testament as of one long-drawn 
epical grimace, pulled by a merry-andrew, who has 
found a certain despicable eminence over human re- 
spect and human affections by perching himself astride 
upon the gallows. Between these two views, at best, 
all temperate judgments will be found to fall ; and 
rather, as I imagine, toward the last. 

There were two things on which he felt with perfect 
and, in one case, even threatening sincerity. 

The first of these was an undisguised envy of those 
richer than himself. He was forever drawing a paral- 
lel, already exemplified from his own words, between 
the happy life of the well-to do and the miseries of the 
poor. Burns, too proud and honest not to work, con- 
tinued through all reverses to sing of poverty with a 
light, defiant note. Beranger waited till he was him- 
self beyond the reach of want, before writing the Old 
Vagabond or Jacques. Samuel Johnson, although he 
was very sorry to be poor, " was a great arguer for the 
advantages of poverty" in his ill days. Thus it is that 
brave men carry their crosses, and smile with the fox 
burrowing in their vitals. But Villon, who had not 
the courage to be poor with honesty, now whiningly 
implores our sympathy, now shows his teeth upon the 
dung-heap with an ugly snarl. He envies bitterly, 
envies passionately. Poverty, he protests, drives men 
to steal, as hunger makes the wolf sally from the forest. 
The poor, he goes on, will always have a carping word 
to sav, or. if that outlet be denied, nourish rebellious 



2 26 FRANC^OIS VILLON, 

thoughts. It is a calumny on the noble army of the 
poor. Thousands in a small way of life, ay, and 
even in the smallest, go through life with tenfold as 
much honor and dignity and peace of mind, as the 
rich gluttons whose dainties and state-beds awakened 
Villon's covetous temper. And every morning's sun 
sees thousands who pass whistling to their toil. But 
Villon was the " mauvais pauvre" defined by Victor 
Hugo, and, in its English expression, so admirably 
stereotyped by Dickens. He was the first wicked 
sans-culotte. He is the man of genius with the mole- 
skin cap. He is mighty pathetic and beseeching here 
in the street, but I would not go down a dark road 
with him for a large consideration. 

The second of the points on which he was genuine 
and emphatic was common to the middle ages ; a 
deep and somewhat snivelling conviction of the tran- 
sitory nature of this life and the pity and horror of 
death. ^t)ld age and the grave, with some dark and 
yet half-sceptical terror of an after-world — these were 
ideas that clung about his bones like a disease. An 
old ape, as he says, may play all the tricks in its reper- 
tory, and none of them will tickle an audience into 
good humor. " Tousjours vieil synge est desplai- 
sant. " It is not the old jester who receives most rec- 
ognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh 
and handsome, who knows the new slang, and carries 
off his vice with a certain air. Of this, as a tavern 
jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. As 
for the women with whom he was best acquainted, his 



STUDE.VT, FOE T, A ND BO USEBREAKER. 227 

reflections on their old age, in all their harrowing 
pathos, shall remain in the original for me. Horace 
has disgraced himself to something the same tune ; 
but what Horace throws out with an ill-favored laugh, 
Villon dwells on with an almost maudlin whimper. 

It is in death that he finds his truest inspiration ; in 
the swift and sorrowful change that overtakes beauty ; 
in the strange revolution by which great fortunes and 
renowns are diminished to a handful of churchyard 
dust ; and in the utter passing away of what was once 
lovable and mighty. It is in this that the mixed tex- 
ture of his thought enables him to reach such poig- 
nant and terrible effects, and to enchance pity with 
ridicule, like a man cutting capers to a funeral march. 
It is in this, also, that he rises out of himself into the 
higher spheres of art. So, in the ballade by which he 
is best known, he rings the changes on names that 
once stood for beautiful and queenly women, and are 
now no more than letters and a legend. " Where 
are the snows of yester year ?" runs the burden. And 
so, in another not so famous, he passes in review the 
different degrees of bygone men, from the holy Apos- 
tles and the golden Emperor of the East, down to the 
heralds, pursuivants, and trumpeters, who also bore 
their part in the world's pageantries and ate greedily 
at great folks' tables : all this to the refrain of "So 
much carry the winds away !" Probably, there was 
some melancholy in his mind for a yet lower grade, 
and Montigny and Colin de Cayeux clattering their 
bones on Paris gibbet. Alas, and with so pitiful an 



228 FRANQOIS VILLON. 

experience of life, Villon can offer us nothing but ter- 
ror and lamentation about death ! No one has ever 
more skilfully communicated his own disenchant- 
ment ; no one ever blown a more ear-piercing note of 
sadness. This unrepentant thief can attain neither to 
Christian confidence, nor to the spirit of the bright 
Greek saying, that whom the gods love die early. It 
is a poor heart, and a poorer age, that cannot accept 
the conditions of life with some heroic readiness. 

TV *¥• ^ T» T^ 

The date of the Large Testament is the last date in 
the poet's biography. After having achieved that ad- 
mirable and despicable performance, he disappears 
into the night from whence he came. How or when 
he died, whether decently in bed or trussed up to a 
gallows, remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators. 
It appears his health had suffered in the pit at Meun ; 
he was thirty years of age and quite bald ; with the 
notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him 
with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may 
imagine. In default of portraits, this is all I have 
been able to piece together, and perhaps even the bald- 
ness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A 
sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his 
eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit 
and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly 
the sorriest figure on the rolls of fame. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

EoR one who was no great politician, nor (as men 
go) especially wise, capable or virtuous, Charles of 
Orleans is more than usually enviable to all who love 
that better sort of fame which consists in being known 
not widely, but intimately. ** To be content that 
time to come should know there was such a man, not 
caring whether they knew more of him, or to subsist 
under naked denominations, without deserts or noble 
acts," is, says Sir Thomas Browne, a frigid ambition. 
It is to some more specific memory that youth looks 
forward in its vigils. Old kings are sometimes disin- 
terred in all the emphasis of life, the hands untainted 
by decay, the beard that had so often wagged in camp 
or senate still spread upon the royal bosom ; and in 
busts and pictures, some similitude of the great and 
beautiful of former days is handed down. In this 
way, public curiosity^ may be gratified, but hardly any 
private aspiration after fame. It is not likely that 
posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible 
that it may respect or sympathize ; and so a man 
would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit 
than a portrait of his face, figura afiimi magis quam 
corporis. Of those who have thus sur\'ived themselves 
most completely, left a sort of personal seduction be- 



230 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

hind them in the world, and retained, after death, the 
art of making friends, Montaigne and Samuel John- 
son certainly stand first. But we have portraits of all 
sorts of men, from august Csesar to the king's dwarf ; 
and all sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in 
the Louvre to a profile over the grocer's chimney-shelf. 
And so in a less degree, but no less truly, than the 
spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful Essays, 
that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old songs 
and old account-books ; and it is still in the choice of 
the reader to make this duke's acquaintance, and, if 
their humors suit, become his friend. 



His birth — if we are to argue from a man's parents 
— was above his merit. It is not merely that he was 
the grandson of one king, the father of another, and 
the uncle of a third ; but something more specious 
was to be looked for from the son of his father, Louis 
de Valois, Duke of Orleans, brother to the mad king 
Charles VL, lover of Queen Isabel, and the leading 
patron of art and one of the leading politicians in 
France. And the poet might have inherited yet 
higher virtues from his mother, Valentina of Milan, a 
very pathetic figure of the age, the faithful wife of an 
unfaithful husband, and the friend of a most unhappy 
king. The father, beautiful, eloquent, and accom- 
plished, exercised a strange fascination over his con- 
temporaries ; and among those who dip nowadays 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 231 

into the annals of the time there are not many — and 
these few are Httle to be envied — who can resist the 
fascination of the mother. All mankind owe her a 
debt of gratitude because she brought some comfort 
into the life of the poor madman who wore the crown 
of France. 

Born (]\Iay 1391) of such a noble stock, Charles 
was to know from the first all favors of nature and art. 
His father's gardens were the admiration of his con- 
temporaries ; his castles were situated in the most 
agreeable parts of France, and sumptuously adorned. 
We have preserved, in an inventory of 1403, the de- 
scription of tapestried rooms where Charles may have 
played in childhood.^ "A green room, with the 
ceiling full of angels, and the dossier of shepherds and 
shepherdesses seeming {^faisant contenance) to eat nuts 
and cherries. A room of gold, silk and worsted, with 
a device of little children in a river, and the sky full of 
birds. A room of green tapestry, showing a knight 
and lady at chess in a pavilion. Another green room, 
with shepherdesses in a trellised garden worked in 
gold and silk. A carpet representing cherry-trees, 
where there is a fountain, and a lady gathering cher- 
ries in a basin." These were some of the pictures 
over which his fancy might busy itself of an afternoon, 
or at morning as he lay awake in bed. With our 
deeper and more logical sense of life, we can have no 
idea how large a space in the attention of mediaeval 
men might be occupied by such figured hangings on 

* ChampolHon-Figeac's Louis et Charles d' Orleans, p. 348. 



232 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

the wall. There was something timid and purblind 
in the view they had of the world. Morally, they 
saw nothing outside of traditional axioms ; and little 
of the physical aspect of things entered vividly into 
their mind, beyond what was to be seen on church 
windows and the walls and floors of palaces. The 
reader will remember how Villon's mother conceived 
of heaven and hell and took all her scanty stock of 
theology from the stained glass that threw its light 
upon her as she prayed. And there is scarcely a 
detail of external effect in the chronicles and romances 
of the time, but might have been borrowed at second 
hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the 
history of mankind which we may see paralleled, to 
some extent, in the first infant school, where the 
representations of lions and elephants alternate round 
the wall with moral verses and trite presentments of 
the lesser virtues. So that to live in a house of many 
pictures was tantamount, for the time, to a liberal 
education in itself. 

At Charles's' birth an order of knighthood was in- 
augurated in his honor. At nine years old, he was a 
squire ; at eleven, he had the escort of a chaplain 
and a schoolmaster ; at twelve, his uncle the king 
made him a pension of twelve thousand livres d' or. ^ 
He saw the most brilliant and the most learned per- 
sons of France, in his father's Court ; and would not 
fail to notice that these brilliant and learned persons 

1 D'Hericault's admirable Memoir^ prefixed to his edition of Charles's 
works, vol. i. p. xi. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 233 

were one and all engaged in rhyming. Indeed, if it 
is difficult to realize the part played by pictures, it is 
perhaps even more difficult to realize that played by 
verses in the polite and active history of the age. At 
the siege of Pontoise, English and French exchanged 
defiant ballades over the walls. ^ If a scandal hap- 
pened, as in the loathsome thirty-third story of the 
Cent NoiiveUes Nouvelles, all the wits must make rondels 
and chansonettes, which they would hand from one 
to another with an unmanly sneer. Ladies carried 
their favorite's ballades in their girdles.- IMargaret of 
Scotland, all the world knows already, kissed Alain 
Chartier's lips in honor of the many virtuous thoughts 
and golden sayings they had uttered ; but it is not so 
well known, that this princess was herself the most in- 
dustrious of poetasters, that she is supposed to have 
hastened her death by her literary vigils, and sometimes 
wrote as many as twelve rondels in the day.^ It was 
in rhyme, even, that the young Charles should learn 
his lessons. He might get all manner of instruction 
in the truly noble art of the chase, not without a 
smack of ethics by the way, from the compendious 
didactic poem of Gace de la Eigne. Nay, and it was 
in rhyme that he should learn rhyming : in the verses 
of his father's ^laitre d' Hotel, Eustache Deschamps, 
which treated of " I'art de dictier et de faire changons, 
ballades, virelais et rondeaux," along with many other 

* Vallet de Viriville, Charles I'll, et sen Epoque, ii. 428, note 2. 
' See Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rend, i. 167. 
« Vallet, Charles VII., ii. 85, 86, note 2. 



234 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

matters worth attention, from the courts of Heaven to 
the misgovernment of France. ^ At this rate, all 
knowledge is to be had in a goody, and the end of it 
is an old song. We need not wonder when we hear 
from Monstrelet that Charles was a very well-educated 
person. He could string Latin texts together by the 
hour, and make ballades and rondels better than Eus- 
tache Deschamps himself. He had seen a mad king 
who would not change his clothes, and a drunken em- 
peror who could not keep his hand from the wine- 
cup. He had spoken a great deal with jesters and 
fiddlers, and with the profligate lords who helped his 
father to waste the revenues of France. He had seen 
ladies dance on into broad daylight, and much burn- 
ing of torches and waste of dainties and good wine.'^ 
And when all is said, it was no very helpful prepara- 
tion for the battle of life, "I believe Louis XL," 
writes Comines, " would not have saved himself, if he 
had not been very differently brought up from such 
other lords as I have seen educated in this country ; 
for these were taught nothing but to play the jacka- 
napes with finery and fine words." ^ I am afraid 
Charles took such lessons to heart, and conceived of 
life as a season principally for junketing and war. 



* ChampoUion-Figeac, 193-198. 

2 Ibid. 2og. 

3 The student will see that there are facts cited, and expressions borrowed, 
in this paragraph, from a period extending over almost the whole of 
Charles's life, instead of being confined entirely to his boyhood. As I do 
not believe there was any change, so I do not believe there is any anachro- 
nism involved. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 235 

His view of the whole duty of man, so empty, vain, 
and wearisome to us, was yet sincerely and consistently 
held. When he came in his ripe years to compare 
the glor}' of two kingdoms, England and France, it 
was on three points only, — pleasures, valor, and 
riches, — that he cared to measure them ; and in the 
very outset of that tract he speaks of the life of the 
great as passed, * ' whether in arms, as in assaults, bat- 
tles, and sieges, or in jousts and tournaments, in high 
and stately festivities and in funeral solemnities." ^ 

When he was no more than thirteen, his father had 
him affianced to Isabella, virgin-widow of our Richard 
II. and daughter of his uncle Charles VI. ; and, two 
years after (June 29, 1406), the cousins were married 
at Compiegne, he fifteen, she seventeen years of age. 
It was in every way a most desirable match. The bride 
brought five hundred thousand francs of dowry. The 
ceremony was of the utmost magnificence, Louis of 
Orleans figuring in crimson velvet, adorned with no 
less than seven hundred and ninety-five pearls, gath- 
ered together expressly for this occasion. And no 
doubt it must have been very gratifying for a young 
gentleman of fifteen, to play the chief part in a pageant 
so gayly put upon the stage. Only, the bridegroom 
might have been a little older ; and, as ill-luck would 
have it, the bride herself was of this way of thinking, 
and would not be consoled for the loss of her title as 



1 The Debate between the Heralds of France and England, translated 
and admirably edited by Mr. Henry Pyne. For the attribution of this 

tract'to Charles, ths reader is referred to Mr. Pyne's conclusive argument 



236 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

queen, or the contemptible age of her new husband. 
Pleuroit fort ladite Isaheau ; the said Isabella wept 
copiously. ' It is fairly debatable whether Charles was 
much to be pitied when, three years later (Septembei 
1409), this odd marriage was dissolved by death. 
Short as it was, however, this connection left a lasting 
stamp upon his mind ; and we find that, in the last 
decade of his life, and after he had remarried for per- 
haps the second time, he had not yet forgotten or for- 
given the violent death of Richard II. " Ce mauvais 
cas" — that ugly business, he writes, has yet to be 
avenged. 

The marriage festivity was on the threshold of evil 
days. The great rivalry between Louis of Orleans and 
John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had been for- 
sworn with the most reverend solemnities. But the 
feud was only in abeyance, and John of Burgundy still 
conspired in secret. On November i^, 1407 — in that 
black winter when the frost lasted six-and-sixty days 
on end — a summons from the king reached Louis of 
Orleans at the Hotel Barbette, where he had been sup- 
ping with Queen Isabel. It was seven or eight in the 
evening, and the inhabitants of the quarter were abed. 
He set forth in haste, accompanied by two squires rid- 
ing on one horse, a page, and a few varlets running 
with torches. Ashe rode, he hummed to himself and 
trifled with his glove. And so riding, he was beset by 
the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of Bar- 
gundy set an ill precedent in this deed, as he found 

1 Des Ursin.^. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 237 

some years after on the bridge of Montereau ; and 
even in the meantime he did not profit quietly by his 
rival's death. The horror of the other princes seems 
to have perturbed himself ; he avowed his guilt in the 
council, tried to brazen it out, finally lost heart and 
fled at fall gallop, cutting bridges behind him, toward 
Bapaume and Lille. And so there we have the head 
of one faction, who had just made himself the most 
formidable man in France, engaged in a remarkably 
hurried journey, with black care on the pillion. And 
meantime, on the other side, the widowed duchess 
came to Paris in appropriate mourning, to demand 
justice for her husband's death. Charles VI. , who 
was then in a lucid interval, did probably all that he 
could, when he raised up the kneeling suppliant with 
kisses and smooth words. Things were at a dead -lock. 
The criminal might be in the sorriest fright, but he 
was still the greatest of vassals. Justice was easy to 
ask and not difficult to promise ; how it was to be ex- 
ecuted was another question. No one in France was 
strong enough to punish John of Burgundy ; and per- 
haps no one, except the widow, very sincere in wish- 
ing to punish him. 

She, indeed, was eaten up of zeal ; but the intensity 
of her eagerness wore her out ; and she died about a 
year after the murder, of grief and indignation, unre- 
quited love and unsatisfied resentment. It was during 
the last months of her life that this fiery and generous 
woman, seeing the soft hearts of her own children, 
looked with envy on a certain natural son of her hus- 



238 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

band's destined to become famous in the sequel as the 
Bastard of Orleans, or the brave Dunois. " You were 
stolen from ?7ie," she said ; *' it is you who are fit to 
avenge your father. " These are not the words of or- 
dinary mourning, or of an ordhiary woman. It is a 
saying, over which Balzac would have rubbed his epis- 
copal hands. That the child who was to avenge her 
husband had not been born out of her body, was a 
thing intolerable to Valentina of Milan ; and the ex- 
pression of this singular and tragic jealousy is preserved 
to us by a rare chance, in such straightforward and 
vivid words as we are accustomed to hear only on the 
stress of actual life, or in the theatre. In history — 
where we see things as in a glass darkly, and the fashion 
of former times is brought before us, deplorably adul- 
terated and defaced, fitted to very vague and pompous 
words, and strained through many men's minds of 
everything personal or precise — this speech of the 
widowed duchess startles a reader, somewhat as the 
footprint startled Robinson Crusoe. A human voice 
breaks in upon the silence of the study, and the stu- 
dent is aware of a fellow-creature in his world of docu- 
ments. With such a clew in hand, one may imagine 
how this wounded lioness would spur and exasperate 
the resentment of her children, and what would be the 
last words of counsel and command she left behind 
her. 

With these instances of his dying mother — almost 
a voice from the tomb— still tingling in his ears, the 
position of young Charles of Orleans, when he was left 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 239 

at the head of that great house, was curiously similar 
to that of Shakspeare's Hamlet. The times were out 
of joint ; here was a murdered father to avenge on a 
powerful murderer ; and here, in both cases, a lad of 
inactive disposition born to set these matters right. 
Valentina's commendation of Dunois involved a judg- 
ment on Charles, and that judgment was exactly cor- 
rect. Whoever might be, Charles was not the man to 
avenge his father. Like Hamlet, this son of a dear 
father murdered was sincerely grieved at heart. Like 
Hamlet, too, he could unpack his heart with words, 
and wrote a most eloquent letter to the king, com- 
plaining that what was denied to him would not be 
denied " to the lowest born and poorest man on 
earth." Even in his private hours he strove to pre- 
serve a lively recollection of his injury, and keep up 
the native hue of resolution. He had gems engraved 
with appropriate legends, hortatory or threatening : 
*' Dieu le scet,"' God knows it ; or *' Souveiiez-vous 
de— ' ' Remember ! ' It is only tosvard the end that 
the two stories begin to differ ; and in some points 
the historical version is the more tragic. Hamlet 
only stabbed a silly old councillor behind the arras ; 
Charles of Orleans trampled France for five years undet 
the hoofs of his banditti. The miscarriage of Ham- 
let's vengeance was confined, at widest, to the palace ; 
the ruin wrought by Charles of Orleans was as broad 
as France. 

Yet the first act of the young duke is worthy of hon- 

1 Michelet, iv. App. 179, p. ^37. 



240 CHARLES OF ORLEANS, 

orable mention. Prodigal Louis had made enormous 
debts ; and there is a story extant, to illustrate how 
lightly he himself regarded these commercial obliga- 
tions. It appears that Louis, after a narrow escape he 
made in a thunder-storm, had a sm,art access of peni- 
tence, and announced he would pay his debts on the 
following Sunday. More than eight hundred creditors 
presented themselves, but by that time the devil was 
well again, and they were shown the door with more 
gayety than politeness. A time when such cynical 
dishonesty was possible for a man of culture is not, it 
will be granted, a fortunate epoch for creditors. When 
the original debtor was so lax, we may imagine how 
an heir would deal with the incumbrances of his in- 
heritance. On the death of Philip the Forward, fatheE 
of that John the Fearless whom we have seen at work, 
the widow went through the ceremony of a public re- 
nunciation of goods ; taking off her purse and girdle, 
she left them, on the grave, and thus, by one notable 
act, cancelled her husband's debts and defamed his 
honor. The conduct of young Charles of Orleans was 
very different. To ra,eet the joint liabilities of his 
lather and mother (for Valentina also was lavish), he 
had to sell or pledge a quantity of jewels ; and yet he 
would not take advantage of a pretext, even legally 
valid, to diminish the amount. Thus, one Godefroi 
Lefevre, having disbursed many odd sums for the late 
duke, and received or kept no vouchers, Charles or- 
dered that he should be believed upon his oath.^ To 

1 ChampoUion-Figeac, pp. 279 Zz.. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 241 

a modern mind this seems as honorable to his father's 
memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as 
high as Haman. And as things fell out, except a re- 
cantation from the University of Paris, which had justi- 
fied the murder out of party feeling, and various other 
purely paper reparations, this was about the outside of 
what Charles was to effect in that direction. He lived 
five years, and grew up from sixteen to twenty-one, in 
the midst of the most horrible civil war, or series of 
civil wars, that ever devastated France ; and from first 
to last his wars were ill-starred, or else his victories 
useless. Two years after the murder (]\Iarch 1409), 
John the Fearless having the upper hand for the mo- 
ment, a shameful and useless reconciliation took 
place, by the king's command, in the church of Our 
Lady at Chartres. The advocate of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy stated that Louis of Orleans had been killed 
"for the good of the king's person and realm." 
Charles and his brothers, with tears of shame, under 
protest, pour nepas desobeir aiiroi, forgave their father's 
murderer and swore peace upon the missal. It was, 
as I say^ a shameful and useless ceremony ; the very 
grefiier, entering it in his register, wrote in the margin, 
** Pax, pax, i7iquit Propheta, etnoneslpax." ^ Charles 
was soon after allied with the abominable Bernard 
d'Armagnac, even betrothed or married to a daughter 
of his, called by a name that sounds like a contradic- 
tion in terms. Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time 
forth, throughout all this monstrous period — a very 

' Michelet, iv. pp. 123-4. 



242 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

nightmare in the history of France— he is no more 
than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon. Some- 
times the smoke hfts, and you can see him for the 
twinkhng of an eye, a very pale figure ; at one mo 
ment there is a rumor he will be crowned king ; at an- 
other, when the uproar has subsided, he will be heard 
still crying out for justice ; and the next (14 12), he is 
showing himself to the applauding populace on the 
same horse with John of Burgundy. But these are 
exceptional seasons, and, for the most part, he merely 
rides at the Gascon's bridle over devastated France. 
His very party go, not by the name of Orleans, but 
by the name of Armagnac. Paris is in the hands of 
the butchers : the peasants have taken to the woods. 
Alliances are made and broken as if in a country 
dance ; the English called in, now by this one, now 
by the other. Poor people sing in church, with white 
faces and lamentable music : ' ' Domiiie Jesu, parce 
poptdo iuo, dirige in viam pads principes. ' ' And the 
end and upshot of the whole affair for Charles of Orleans 
is another peace with John the Fearless. France is 
once more tranquil, with the tranquillity of ruin ; he 
may ride home again to Blois, and look, with what 
countenance he may, on those gems he had got en- 
graved in the early days of his resentment, " Sotivenez- 
voiis de — " Remember! He has killed Polonius, to 
be sure ; but the king is never a penny the worse. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 243 



II. 

From the battle of Agincourt (Oct. 14 15) dates the 
second period of Charles's life. The English readei 
will remember the name of Orleans in the play of 
Henry K ; and it is at least odd that we can trace a 
resemblance between the puppet and the original. 
The interjection, " I have heard a sonnet begin so to 
one's mistress" (Act iii. scene 7), may very well indi- 
cate one who was already an expert in that sort of 
trifle ; and the game of proverbs he plays with the 
Constable in the same scene, would be quite in char- 
acter for a man who spent many years of his life cap- 
ping verses with his courtiers. Certainly, Charles was 
in the great battle with five hundred lances (say, three 
thousand men), and there he was made prisoner as he 
led the van. According to one story, some ragged 
English archer shot him down ; and some diligent 
English Pistol, hunting ransoms on the field of battle, 
extracted him from under a heap of bodies and retailed 
him to our King Henry. He was the most important 
capture of the day, and used with all consideration. 
On the way to Calais, Henry sent him a present of 
bread and wine (and bread, you will remember, was 
an article of luxury in the English camp), but Charles 
would neither eat nor drink. Thereupon, Henry 
came to visit him in his quarters. ** Noble cousin/' 
said he, *' how are you.?" Charles replied that he 
was well. " Why, then, do }0u neither eat nor 



244 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

drink?" And then with some asperity, as I imagine, 
the young duke told him that " truly he had no in- 
clination lor food." And our Henry improved the 
occasion with something of a snuffle, assuring his 
prisoner that God had fought against the French on 
account of their manifold sins and transgressions. 
Upon this there supervened the agonies of a rough sea 
passage ; and many French lords, Charles, certainly, 
among the number, declared they would rather endure 
such another defeat than such another sore trial on 
shipboard. Charles, indeed, never forgot his suffer- 
ings. Long afterward, he declared his hatred to a sea- 
faring life, and willingly yielded to England the em- 
pire of the seas, " because there is danger and loss of 
life, and God knows what pity when it storms ; and 
sea-sickness is for many people hard to bear ; and the 
rough life that must be led is little suitable for the no- 
bility :" ^ which, of all babyish utterances that ever 
fell from any public man, may surely bear the bell. 
Scarcely disembarked, he followed his victor, with such 
wry face as we may fancy, through the streets of holi- 
day London. And then the doors closed upon his 
last day of garish life for more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury. After a boyhood passed in the dissipations of a 
luxurious court or in the camp of war, his ears still 
stunned and his cheeks still burning from his enemies' 
jubilations ; out of all this ringing of English bells and 
singing of English anthems, from among all these 
shouting citizens in scarlet cloaks, and beautiful vir- 

* Debate between the Heralds. 



CHARLES 0f mRLEANS. 245 

gins attired in white, he passed into the silence and 
solitude of a political prison/ 

His captivity was not without alleviations. He was 
allowed to go hawking, and he found England an ad- 
mirable country for the sport ; he was a favorite with 
English ladies, and admired their beauty ; and he did 
not lack for money, wine, or books ; he was honorably 
imprisoned in the strongholds of great nobles, in Wind- 
sor Castle and the Tower of London. But when all 
is said, he was a prisoner for five-and-twenty years. 
For five-and-twenty years he could not go where he 
would, or do what he liked, or speak with any but his 
jailers. We may talk very wisely of alleviations ; there 
is only one alleviation for which the man would thank 
ycu : he would thank you to open the door. With 
what regret Scottish James 1. bethought him (in the 
next room perhaps to Charles) of the time when he 
rose " as early as the day. " What would he not have 
given to wet his boots once more with morning dew, 
and follow his vagrant fancy among the meadows ? 
The only alleviation to the misery of constraint lies in 
the disposition of the prisoner. To each one this 
place of discipline brings his own lesson. It stirs 
Latude or Baron Trenck into heroic action ; it is a 
hermitage for pious and conformable spirits. Beranger 
tells us he found prison life, with its regular hours 
and long evenings, both pleasant and profitable. The 
Pilgrim s Progress and Do?i Quixote were begun in 
prison. It was after they were become (to use the 

^ Sir H. Nicholas, Agincowrt. 



246 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

words of one of them), " Oh, worst imprisonment — 
the dungeon of themselves !" that Homer and Milton 
worked so hard and so well for the profit of mankindo 
In the year 14 15 Henry V. had two distinguished 
prisoners, PVench Charles of Orleans and Scottish 
James I., who whiled away the hours of their captivity 
with rhyming. Indeed, there can be no better pas- 
time for a lonely man than the mechanical exercise of 
verse. Such intricate forms as Charles had been used 
to from childhood, the ballade vith its scanty rhymes ; 
the rondel, with the recurrence lirst of the whole, then 
of half the burden, in thirteen verses, seem to have 
been invented for the prison and the sick-bed. The 
common Scotch saying, on the sight of anything 
operose and finical, " he must have had little to do 
that made that !" might be put as epigraph on all the 
song books of old France. Making such sorts of 
verse belongs to the same class of pleasures as guess- 
ing acrostics or " burying proverbs." It is almost 
purely formal, almost purely verbal. It must be done 
gently and gingerly. It keeps the mind occupied a 
long time, and never so intently as to be distressing ; 
for anything like strain is against the very nature of 
the craft. Sometimes things go easily, the refrains 
fall into their place as if of their own accord, and it 
becomes something of the nature of an intellectual 
tennis ; you must make your poem as the rhymes will 
go, just as you must strike your ball as your adver- 
sary played it. So that these forms are suitable rather 
for those who wish to make verses, than for those who 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 247 

wish to express opinions. Sometimes, on the other 
hand, difficulties arise : rival verses come into a man's 
head, and fugitive words elude his memory. Then it 
is that he enjoys at the same time the deliberate pleas- 
ures of a connoisseur comparing wines, and the ardor 
o( the chase. He may have been sitting all day long 
in prison with folded hands ; but when he goes to 
bed, the retrospect will seem animated and eventful. 

Besides confirming himself as an habitual maker of 
verses, Charles acquired some new opinions during his 
captivity. He was perpetuallj reminded of the change 
that had befallen him. He found the climate of Eng- 
land cold and " prejudicial to the human frame ;" 
he had a great contempt for English fruit and English 
beer ; even the coal fires were unpleasing in his eyes. ^ 
He was rooted up from among his friends and cus- 
toms and the places that had known him. And so in 
this strange land he began to learn the love of his 
own. Sad people all the world over are like to be 
moved when the wind is in some particular quarter. 
So Burns preferred when it was in the west, and blew 
to him from his mistress ; so the girl in the ballade, 
looking south to Yarrow, thought it might carry a kiss 
betwixt her and her gallant ; and so we find Charles 
singing of the " pleasant wind that comes from 
France."" One day, at '* Dover-on-the-Sea," he 
looked across the straits, and saw the sandhills about 
Calais. And it happened to him, he tells us in a bal- 
lade, to remember his happiness over there in the 

1 Debate between the Heralds. ^ Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 43. 



248 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

past ; and he was both sad and merry at the recollec- 
tion, and could not have his fill of gazing on the 
shores of France. ' Although guilty of unpatriotic acts, 
he had never been exactly unpatriotic in feeling. But 
his sojourn in England gave, for the time at least, 
some consistency to what had been a very weak and 
ineffectual prejudice. He must have been under the 
influence of more than usually solemn considerations, 
when he proceeded to turn Henry's puritanical homily 
after Agincourt into a ballade, and reproach France, 
and himself by implication, with pride, gluttony, idle- 
ness, unbridled covetousness, and sensuality.- For 
the moment, he must really have been thinking more 
of France than of Charles of Orleans. 

And another lesson he learned. He who was only 
to be released in case of peace, begins to think upon 
the disadvantages of war. " Pray for peace," is his 
refrain : a strange enough subject for the ally of Ber- 
nard d'Armagnac.^ But this lesson was plain and 
practical ; it had one side in particular that was 
specially attractive for Charles ; and he did not hesi- 
tate to explain it in so many words. " Everybody," 
he writes — 1 translate roughly — " everybody should 
be much inclined to peace, for everybody has a deal 
to gain by it." ' 

Charles made laudable endeavors to acquire Eng- 
lish, and even learned to write a rondel in that tongue 



1 Works (ed. d'Hericault), i. 143. 3 Ibid, 144. 

2 Ibid. 190. 4 Jbid, 158. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 249 

of quite average mediocrity. ' He was for some time 
billeted on the unhappy Suffolk, who received four- 
teen shillings and fourpence a day for his expenses ; 
and from the fact that Suffolk afterward visited Charles 
in France while he was negotiating the marriage of 
Henry VI., as well as the terms of that nobleman's 
impeachment, we may believe there was some not un- 
kindly intercourse between the prisoner and his jailer : 
a fact of considerable interest when we remember that 
Suffolk's wife was the granddaughter of the poet 
Geoffrey Chaucer.^ Apart from this, and a mere 
catalogue of dates and places, only one thing seems 
evident in the story of Charles's captivity. It seems 
evident that, as these five- and- twenty years drew on, 
he became less and less resigned. Circumstances were 
against tne growth of such a feeling. One after an- 
other of his fellow- prisoners was ransomed and went 
home. -More than once he was himself permitted to 
visit France ; where he worked on abortive treaties and 
showed himself more eager for his own deliverance 
than for the profit of his native land. Resignation 
may follow after a reasonable time upon despair ; but 
if a man is persecuted by a series of brief and irritat- 
ing hopes, his mind no more attains to a settled frame 
of resolution, than his eye would grow familiar with a 
night of thunder and lightning. Years after, when he 



^ M. Champollion-Figeac gives many in his editions of Charles's works, 
most 'as ) should think) of very doubtful authenticity, or worse. 

2 Rymer, x. 564. D'Hericault's Memoir., p. xli. Gairdner's Paston Let- 
ters., i. 27, 99. 



250 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

was speaking at the trial oi that Duke of Alen9on, who 
began hfe so hopefully as the boyish favorite of Joan 
of Arc, he sought to prove that captivity M^as a harder 
punishment than death. ' ' For I have had experience 
myself," he said ; " and in my prison of England, 
for the weariness, danger, and displeasure in which I 
then lay, I have many a time wished I had been slain 
at the battle where they took me." ^ This is a flour- 
ish, if you will, but it is something more. His spirit 
would sometimes rise up in a fine anger against the petty 
desires and contrarieties of life. He would compare 
his own condition with the quiet and dignified estate 
of the dead ; and aspire to lie among his comrades on 
the field of Agincourt, as the Psalmist prayed to have 
the wings of a dove and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of the sea. But such high thoughts came to Charles 
only in a flash. 

John the Fearless had been murdered in his turn 
on the bridge of Montereau so far back as 14 19. His 
son, Philip the Good — partly to extinguish the feud, 
partly that he might do a popular action, and partly, 
in view of his ambitious schemes, to detach another 
great vassal from the throne of France— had taken up 
the cause of Charles of Orleans, and negotiated dili- 
gently for his release. In 1433 a r>urgundian embassy 
was admitted to an interview with the captive duke, in 
the presence of Suliolk, Charles shook hands most 
affectionately with the ambassadors. They asked after 
his health. " I am well enough i a body," he replied, 

' ChampoUion-Figeac, 377. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 251 

" but far from well in mind. I am dying of grief at 
having to pass the best days of my life in prison, with 
none to sympathize. " The talk falling on the chances 
of peace, Charles referred to Suffolk if he were not 
sincere and constant in his endeavors to bring it 
about. "If peace depended on me," he said, "I 
should procure it gladly, were it to cost me my life 
seven days after." We may take this as showing 
what a large price he set, not so much on peace, as 
on seven days of freedom. Seven days ! —he would 
make them seven years in the employment. Finally, 
he assured the ambassadors of his good will to Philip 
of Burgundy ; squeezed one of them by the hand and 
nipped him twice in the arm to signify things unspeak- 
able before Suffolk ; and two days after sent them 
Suffolk's barber, one Jean Garnet, a native of Lille, 
to testify more freely of his sentiments. " As I speak 
French," said this emissary, " the Duke of Orleans 
is more familiar with me than with any other of the 
household ; and I can bear witness he never said any- 
thing against Duke Philip." ' It will be remembered 
that this person, with whom he was so anxious to 
stand well, was no other than his hereditary enemy, 
the son of his father's murderer. But the honest fel- 
low bore no malice, indeed not he. lie began ex- 
changing ballades with Philip, whom he apostrophizes 
as his companion, his cousin, and his brother. He 
assures him that, soul and body, he is altogether Bur- 
gundian ; and protests that he has given his heart in 

1 Dom Plancher, iv. 178-9. 



252 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

pledge to him. Regarded as the history of a vendetta, 
it must be owned that Charles's life has points of some 
originality. And yet there is an engaging frankness 
about these ballades which disarms criticism.^ You 
see Charles throwing himself headforemost into the 
trap ; you hear Burgundy, in his answers, begin to 
inspire him with his own prejudices, and draw melan- 
choly pictures of the misgovernment of France. But 
Charles's own spirits are so high and so amiable, and 
he is so thoroughly convinced his cousin is a fine fel- 
low, that one's scruples are carried away in the torrent 
of his happiness and gratitude. And his would be a 
sordid spirit who would not clap hands at the consum- 
mation (Nov. 1440) ; when Charles, after having sworn 
on the Sacrament that he would never again bear arms 
against England, and pledged himself body and soul to 
the unpatriotic faction in his own country, set out from 
London with a light heart and a damaged integrity. 

In the magnificent copy of Charles's poems, given 
by our Henry VII. to Elizabeth of York on the occa- 
sion of their marriage, a large illumination figures at 
the head of one of the pages, which, in chronological 
perspective, is almost a history of his imprisonment. 
It gives a view of London with all its spires, the river 
passing through the old bridge and busy with boats. 
One side of the White Tower has been taken out, and 
we can see, as under a sort of shrine, the paved room 
where the duke sits writing. He occupies a high- 
backed bench in front of a great chimney ; red and 

1 Works, i. 157-63. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 253 

black ink are before him ; and the upper end of the 
apartment is guarded by many halberdiers, with the 
red cross of England on their breast. On the next 
side of the tower he appears again, leaning out of win- 
dow and gazing on the river ; doubtless there blows 
just then " a pleasant wind from out the land of 
France," and some ship comes up the river: "the 
ship of good news." At the door we find him yet 
again ; this time embracing a messenger, while a 
groom stands by holding two saddled horses. And 
yet further to the left, a cavalcade defiles out of the 
tower ; the duke is on his way at last toward ' ' the 
sunshine of France." 

III. 

During the five and -twenty years of his captivity, 
Charles had not lost in the esteem of his fellow-coun- 
trymen. For so young a man, the head of so great a 
house, and so numerous a party, to be taken prisoner 
as he rode in the vanguard of France, and stereotyped 
for all men in this heroic attitude, was to taste untime- 
ously the honors of the grave. Of him, as of the 
dead, it would be ungenerous to speak evil ; what 
litde energy he had displayed would be remembered 
with piety, when all that he had done amiss was cour- 
teously forgotten. As English folk looked for Arthur ; 
as Danes awaited the coming of Ogier ; as Somerset- 
shire peasants or sergeants of the Old Guard expected 
the return of Monmouth or Napoleon ; the country- 
men of Charles of Orleans looked over the straits 



254 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

toward his English prison with desire and confidence. 
Events had so fallen out while he was rhyming bal- 
lades, that he had become the type of all that was 
most truly patriotic. The remnants of his old party 
had been the chief defenders of the unity of France. 
His enemies of Burgundy had been notoriously fa- 
vorers and furtherers of English domination. People 
forgot that his brother still lay by the heels for an un- 
patriotic treaty with England, because Charles himself 
had been taken prisoner patriotically fighting against 
it. That Henry V. had left special orders against his 
liberation, served to increase the wistful pity with 
which he was regarded. And when, in defiance of 
all contemporary virtue, and against express pledges, 
the En^rlish carried war into their prisoner's fief, not 
only France, but all thinking men in Christendom, 
were roused to indignation against the oppressors, 
and sympathy with the victim. It was little wonder 
if he came to bulk somewhat largely in the imagina- 
tion of the best of those at home. Charles le Bout- 
teillier, when (as the story goes) he slew Clarence at 
Beauge, was only seeking an exchange for Charles of 
Orleans. ^ It was one of Joan of Arc's declared in- 
tentions to deliver the captive duke. If there was no 
other way, she meant to cross the seas and bring him 
home by force. And she professed before her judges 
a sure knowledge that Charles of Orleans was beloved 
QfGod.^ 

Alas ! it was not at all as a deliverer that Charles 

1 Vallet's Charles VII. , i. 251. ^ Proces de Jeanne d'' Arc, i. 133-55. 



VHARLES OF ORLEANS. 255 

returned to France. He was nearly fifty years old. 
Many changes had been accomplished since, at twenty- 
three, he was taken on the field of Agincourt. But 
of all these he was profoundly ignorant, or had only 
heard of them in the discolored reports of Philip of 
Burgundy. He had the ideas of a former generation, 
and sought to correct them by the scandal of a fac- 
tious part3^ With such qualifications he came back 
eager for the domination, the pleasures, and the dis- 
play that befitted his princely birth. A long disuse 
of all political activity combined with the flatteries of 
his new^ friends to fill him. with an overweening con- 
ceit of his own capacity and influence. If aught had 
gone wrong in his absence, it seemed quite natural 
men should look to him for its redress. Was not 
Kino^ Arthur come again ? 

The Duke of Burgundy received him with politic 
honors. He took his guest by his foible for pageant- 
ry, all the easier as it "was a foible of his own ; and 
Charles walked right out of prison into much the 
same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he 
had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days after 
his deliverance he was married to Mary of Cleves, 
at St. Omer. The marriage was celebrated with the 
usual pomp of the Burgundian court ; there were 
joustings, and illuminations, and animals that spouted 
wine ; and many nobles dined together, comme en 
brigade, and were served abundantly w^ith many rich 
and curious dishes. ^ It must have rem.inded Charles 

3 Mni5>lre!e{. 



256 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

not a little of his first marriage at Compiegne ; only 
then he was two years the junior of his bride, and this 
time he was five-and-thirty years her senior. It will 
be a fine question which marriage promises more : for 
a boy of fifteen to lead off with a lass of seventeen, or 
a man of fifty to make a match of it with a child of 
fifteen. But there was something bitter in both. 
The lamentations of Isabella will not have been for- 
gotten. As for Mary, she took up with one Jaquet 
de la Lain, a sort of muscular Methody of the period, 
with a huge appetite for tournaments, and a habit of 
confessing himself the last thing before he went to 
bed. ^ With such a hero, the young duchess's amours 
were most likely innocent ; and in all other ways she 
was a suitable partner for the duke, and well fitted to 
enter into his pleasures. 

When the festivities at St. Omer had come to an 
end, Charles and his wife set forth by Ghent and 
Tournay. The towns gave him offerings of money 
as he passed through, to help in the payment of his 
ransom. From all sides, ladies and gentlemen 
thronged to offer him their services ; some gave him 
their sons for pages, some archers for a bodyguard ; 
and by the time he reached Tournay, he had a follow- 
ing of 300 horse. Everywhere he was received as 
though he had been the King of France.'^ If he did 
not come to imagine himself something of the sort, 



1 Vallet's Charles VII. ^ iii. chap. i. But see the chronicle that bears 
Jaquet's name : a lean and dreary book. 
' Monstrelet. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 257 

he certainly forgot the existence of any one with a 
better claim to the title. He conducted himself on 
the hypothesis that Charles VII. was another Charles 
VI. He signed with enthusiasm that treaty of Arras, 
which left France almost at the discretion of Bur- 
gundy. On Decem.ber 18 he was still no farther than 
Bruges, where he entered into a private treaty with 
Philip ; and it was not until January 14, ten weeks 
after he disembarked in France, and attended by a 
ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that he arrived in 
Paris and offered to present himself before Charles VII. 
The king sent word that he might come, if he would, 
with a small retinue, but not with his present follow- 
ing ; and the duke, who was mightily on his high 
horse after all the ovations he had received, took the 
king's attitude amiss, and turned aside into Touraine, 
to receive more welcome and more presents, and be 
convoyed by torchlight into faithful cities. 

And so you see, here was King Arthur home again, 
and matters nowise mended in consequence. The 
best we can say is, that this last stage of Charles's 
public life was of no long duration. His confidence 
was soon knocked out of him in the contact with 
others. He began 10 find he was an earthen vessel 
among many vessels of brass ; he began to be shrewdly 
aware that he was no King Arthur. In 1442, at 
Limoges, he made himself the spokesman of the mal- 
content nobility. The king showed himself humiliat- 
ingly indifferent to his counsels, and humiliatingly 
generous toward his necessities. And there, with 



258 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

some blushes, he may be said to have taken farewell 
of the political stage. A feeble attempt on the county 
of Asti is scarce worth the name of exception. Thence- 
forward let Ambition wile whom she may into the 
turmoil of events, our duke will walk cannily in his 
well-ordered garden, or sit by the fire to touch the 
slender reed. ^ 

IV. 

If it were given each of us to transplant his life 
wherever he pleased in time or space, with all the ages 
and all the countries of the world to choose from, 
there would be quite an instructive diversity of taste. 
A certain sedentary majority would prefer to remain 
where they were. Many would choose the Renais- 
sance ; many some stately and simple period of Gre- 
cian life ; and still more elect to pass a few years wan- 
dering among the villages of Palestine with an mspired 
conductor. For some of our quaintly vicious con- 
temporaries, we have the decline of the Roman Em- 
pire and the reign of Henry III. of France. But 
there are others not quite so vicious, who yet cannot 
look upon the world with perfect gravit}', who have 
never taken the categorical imperative to wife, and 
have more taste for what is comfortable than for what 
is magnanimous and high ; and I can imagine some 
of these casting their lot in the Court of Blois during 
the last twenty years of the life of Charles of Orleans. 

1 D'Hericault's Mtr.tnir. xl. xli. Vallet, Charles VI., ii. 4.-^s. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 259 

The duke and duchess, their staff of officers and 
ladies, and the high-born and learned persons who 
were attracted to Blois on a visit, formed a society for 
kiUing time and perfecting each other in various ele- 
gant accomplishments, such as we might imagine for 
an ideal watering place in the Delectable Mountains- 
The company hunted and went on pleasure-parties ; 
they played chess, tables, and many other games. 
What we now call the history of the peiiod passed, I 
imagine, over the heads of these good people much 
as It passes over our own. News reached them, in- 
deed, of great and joyful import. William Peel re- 
ceived eight livres and five sous from the duchess, 
when he brought the first tidings that Rouen was re- 
captured from the English. ^ A little later and the 
duke sang, in a truly patriotic vein, the deliverance of 
Guyenne and Normandy.'^ They were liberal of 
rhymes and largesse, and welcomed the prosperity of 
their country much as they welcomed the coming of 
spring, and with no more thought of collaborating 
toward the event. Religion was not forgotten in the 
Court of Blois. Pilgrimages were agreeable and pic- 
turesque excursions. In those days a well-served 
chapel was something like a good vinery in our own, 
an opportunity for display and the source of mild en- 
j oy ments. There was probably something of his rooted 
delight in pageantry, as well as a good deal of gentle 
piety, in the feelings with which Charles give dinner 
every Friday to thirteen poor people, served them 

1 ChampolHon-Figeac, 368. ^ Works, i. 115. 



2Go CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

himself, and washed their feet with his own hands. ^ 
Solemn affairs would interest Charles and his courtiers 
from their trivial side. The duke perhaps cared less 
for the deliverance of Guyenne and Normandy than 
for his own verses on the occasion ; just as Dr. Rus- 
sell's correspondence in The Times was among the 
most material parts of the Crimean War for that tal- 
ented correspondent. And I think it scarcely cynical 
to suppose that religion as well as patriotism was 
principally cultivated as a means of filling up the day. 
It was not only messengers fiery red with haste and 
charged with the destiny of nations, who were made 
welcome at the gates of Blois. If any man of accom- 
plishment came that way, he was sure of an audience, 
and something for his pocket. The courtiers would 
have received Ben Jonson like Drummond of Haw- 
thornden, and a good pugilist like Captain Barclay. 
They were catholic, as none but the entirely idle can 
be catholic. It might be Pierre, called Dieu d'amours, 
the juggler ; or it might be three high English min- 
strels ; or the two men, players of ghitterns, from the 
kingdom of Scotland, who sang the destruction of the 
Turks ; or again Jehan Rognelet, player of instru- 
ments of music, who played and danced with his wife 
and two children ; they would each be called into the 
castle to give a taste of his proficiency before my lord 
the duke.^ Sometimes the performance was of a more 
personal interest, and produced much the same sensa- 

* D'Hericault's Memoir., xlv. 

2 ChampoUion-Figeac, 381, 361, 381. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 2.^1 

tions as are felt on an English green on the arrival of 
a professional cricketer, or round an English billiard 
table during a match between Roberts and Cooke. 
This was when Jehan Negre, the Lombard, came to 
Blois and played chess against all these chess-players, 
and won much money from my lord and his intimates ; 
or when Baudet Harenc of Chalons made ballades be- 
fore all these ballade-makers/ 

It will not surprise the reader to learn they were all 
makers of ballades and rondels. To write verses for 
May day, seems to have been as much a matter of 
course, as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to 
gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a 
standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted each other 
with humorous and sentimental verses as in a literary 
carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our friend 
Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would 
turn it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes be- 
ing the names of the cases of nouns or the moods of 
verbs ; and Maistre Estienne would make reply in 
similar fashion, seeking to prune the story of its more 
humiliating episodes. If Fredet was too long away 
from Court, a rondel went to upbraid him ; and it 
was in a rondel that Fredet would excuse himself. 
Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, would 
set to work on the same refrain, the same idea, or in 
the same macaronic jargon. Some of the poetasters 
were heavy enough ; others v/ere not wanting in ad- 
dress ; and the duchess herself was among those who 

1 Champollion-Figeac, 359, 361. 



202 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

most excelled. On one occasion eleven competitors 
made a ballade on the idea, 

"I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge" 
(Je meurs de soif empres de la fontaine). 

These eleven ballades still exist ; and one of them 
arrests the attention rather irom the name of the author 
than from any special merit in itself. It purports to 
be the work of Frangois Villon ; and so far as a 
foreigner can judge (which is indeed a small way), it 
may very well be his. Nay, and if any one thing is 
more probable than another, in the great iahula rasa, 
or unknown land, which we are fain to call the biog- 
raphy of Villon, it seems probable enough that he 
may have gone upon a visit to Charles of Orleans. 
Where Master Baudet Harenc, of Chalons, found a 
sympathetic, or perhaps a derisive audience (for who 
can tell nowadays the degree of Baudet' s excellence 
in his art ?), favor would not be wanting for the great- 
est ballade-maker of all time. Great as would seem 
the incongruity, it may have pleased Charles to own 
a sort of kinship with ragged singers, and whimsically 
regard himself as one of the confraternity of poets. 
And he would have other grounds of intimacy with 
Villon. A room looking upon Windsor gardens is a 
different matter from Villon's dungeon at Meun ; yet 
each in his own degree had been tried in prison. 
Each in his own way also, loved the good things of 
this life and the service of the Muses. But the same 
gulf that separated Burns from his Edinburgh patrons 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 263 

would separate the singer of Bohemia from the rhym- 
ing duke. And it is hard to imagine that Villon's 
training among thieves, loose women, and vagabond 
students, had fitted him to move in a society of any 
dignity and courtliness. Ballades are very admirable 
things ; and a poet is doubtless a most interesting 
visitor. But among the courtiers of Charles, there 
would be considerable regard for the proprieties of eti- 
quette : and even a duke will sometimes have an eye 
to his teaspoons. Moreover, as a poet, I can conceive 
he may have disappointed expectadon. It need sur- 
prise nobody if Villon's ballade on the theme, 

"I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge," 

was but a poor performance. He would make better 
verses on the lee-side of a flagon at the sign of the 
Pomme du Pin, than in a cushioned settle in the halls 
of Blois. 

Charles liked change of place. He was often, not 
so much travelling as making a progress ; now to join 
the king for some great tournament : now to visit 
King Rene, at Tarascon, where he had a study of his 
own and saw all manner of interesting things — oriental 
curios, King Rene painting birds, and, what parUcu- 
larly pleased him, Triboulet, the dwarf jester, whose 
skull-cap was no bigger than an orange.^ Sometimes 
the journeys were set about on horseback in a large 
party, with the fourriers sent forward to prepare a 
lodging at the next stage. We find almost Gargantuan 

1 Lecoy de la Marche, Roi Rene, ii. 155, 177. 



264 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

details of the provision made by these oflEicers against 
the duke's arrival, of eg^s and butter and bread, 
cheese and peas and chickens, pike and bream and 
barbel, and wine both white and red. ' Sometimes he 
went by water in a barge, playing chess or tables with 
a friend in the pavilion, or watching other vessels as 
they went before the wind. ^ Children ran along the 
bank, as they do to this day on the Crinan Canal ; 
and when Charles threw in money, they would dive 
and bring it up.^ As he looked on at their exploits, 
I wonder whether that room of gold and silk and 
worsted came back into his memory, with the device 
of little children in a river, and the sky full of birds .? 

He was a bit of a book-fancier, and had vied with 
his brother Angouleme in bringing back the library of 
their grandfather Charles V., when Bedford put it up 
for sale in London." The duchess had a library of 
her own ; and we hear of her borrowing romances 
from ladies in attendance on the blue stocking Marga- 
ret of Scotland.^ Not only were books collected, but 
new books were written at the Court of Blois. The 
widow of one Jean Fougere, a bookbinder, seems to 
have done a number of odd commissions for the 
bibliophilous count. She it was who received three 

1 Champollion-Figeac, chaps, v. and vi. 

2 Ibid. 364 ; Works, i. 172. 

3 Champollion-Figeac, 364 : " Jeter de I'argent aux petis enfans qui 
estoient au long de Bourbon, pour les faire nonner en I'eau et aller querre 
I'argent au fond." 

* Champollion-Figeac, 387. 

* Nouvelle Biographie Diaot, art. " Marie de Cleves." Vallet, Charles 
VI I. y iii. 8s, note i. 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 265 

vellum-skins to bind the duchess's Book of Hours, 
and who was employed to prepare parchment for the 
use of the duke's scribes. And she it was who bound 
in vermilion leather the great manuscript of Charles's 
own poems, which was presented to hiai by his secre- 
tary, Anthony Astesan, with the text in one column, 
and Astesan' s Latin version in the other.' 

Such tastes, with the coming of years, would doubt- 
less take the place of many others. We find in 
Charles's verse much semi- ironical regret for other 
days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He who 
had been " nourished in the schools of love," now 
sees nothing either to please or displease him. Old 
age has imprisoned him withindoors, where he means 
to take his ease, and let younger fellows bestir them- 
selves in life. He had w^ritten (in earlier days, we 
may presume) a bright and defiant little poem in praise 
of solitude. If they would but leave him alone with 
his own thoughts and happy recollections, he declared 
it was beyond the power of melancholy to affect him. 
But now, w^hen his animal strength has so much de- 
clined that he sings the discomforts of winter mstead 
of the inspirations of spring, and he has no longer any 
appetite for life, he confesses he is wretched when 
alone, and, to keep his mind from grievous thoughts, 
he must have many people around him, laughing, 
talking, and singing." 

While Charles was thus falling into years, the order 
of things, of which he was the outcome and ornament, 

1 Champollion-Figeac, 383, 384-386. 2 Works, ii. 57, 258, 



2 66 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

was growing old along with him. The semi-royalty 
of the princes of the blood was already a thing of the 
past ; and when Charles VII. was gathered to his 
fathers, a new king reigned in France, who seemed 
every way the opposite of royal. Louis XI. had aims 
that were incomprehensible, and virtues that were in- 
conceivable to his contemporaries. But his contem- 
poraries were able enough to appreciate his sordid ex- 
terior, and his cruel and treacherous spirit. To the 
whole nobility of France he was a fatal and unreason- 
able phenomenon. All such courts as that of Charles 
at Blois, or his friend Rene's in Provence, would soon 
be made impossible ; interference was the order of the 
day ; hunting was already abolished ; and who should 
say what was to go next ? Louis, in fact, must have 
appeared to Charles primarily in the light of a kill-joy. 
I take it, when missionaries land in South Sea Islands 
and lay strange embargo on the simplest things in life, 
the islanders will not be much more puzzled and irri- 
tated than Charles of Orleans at the policy of the Elev- 
enth Louis. There was one thing, I seem to appre- 
hend, that had always particularly moved him ; and that 
was, any proposal to punish a person of his acquaint- 
ance. No matter what treason he may have made or 
meddled with, an Alengon or an Armagnac was sure 
to find Charles reappear from private life, and do his 
best to get him pardoned. He knew them quite well. 
He had made rondels with them. They were charming 
people in every way. There must certainly be some 
mistake. Had not he himself made anti-national 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 267 

treaties almost before he was out of his nonage ? And 
for the matter of that, had not every one else done the 
like ? Such are some of the thoughts by which he 
might explain to himself his aversion to such extremi- 
ties ; but it was on a deeper basis that the feeling 
probably reposed. A man of his temper could not 
fail to be impressed at the thought of disastrous revo- 
lutions in the fortunes of those he knew. He would 
feel painfully the tragic contrast, when those who had 
everything to make life valuable were deprived of life 
itself. And it was shocking to the clemency of his 
spirit, that sinners should be hurried before their Judge 
without a fitting interval for penitence and satisfaction. 
It was this feeling which brought him at last, a poor, 
purblind blue-bottle of the later autumn, into collision 
with ** the universal spider," Louis XI. He took up 
the defence of the Duke of Brittany at Tours. But 
Louis was then in no humor to hear Charles's texts 
and Latin sentiments ; "he had his back to the wall, 
the future of France was at stake ; and if all the old 
men in the world had crossed his path, they would 
have had the rough side of his tongue like Charles of 
Orleans. I have found nowhere what he said, but it 
seems it was monstrously to the point, and so rudely 
conceived that the old duke never recovered the indig- 
nity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and 
died two days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy- 
fourth year of his age. And so a whiff of pungent 
prose stopped the issue of melodious rondels to the 
end of time. 



268 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 



The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece 
/throughout. He never succeeded in any single pur- 
pose he set before him ; for his deliverance from Eng- 
land, after twenty five years of failure and at the cost 
of dignity and consistency, it would be ridiculously 
hyperbolical to treat as a success. During the first 
part of his life he was the stalking horse of Bernard 
d'Armagnac ; during the second, he was the passive 
instrument of English diplomatists ; and before he 
was well entered on the third, he hastened to become 
the dupe and catspaw of Burgundian treason. On 
each of these occasions, a strong and not dishonorable 
personal motive determined his behavior. In 1407 
and the following years, he had his father's murder 
uppermost in his mind. During his English captivity, 
that thought was displaced by a more immediate desire 
for his own liberation. In 1440 a sentiment of grati- 
tude to Philip of Burgundy blinded him to all else, and 
led him to break with the tradition of his party and his 
own former life. He was born a great vassal, and he 
conducted himself like a private gentleman. He be- 
gan life in a showy and brilliant enough fashion, by 
the light of a petty personal chivalry. He was not 
without some tincture of patriotism ; but it was resolv 
able into two parts : a preference for life among his 
fellow-countrymen, and a barren point of honor. In 
England, he could comfort himself by the reflection 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 269 

that " he had been taken while loyally doing his de- 
voir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in the 
previous years, when he had prepared the disaster of 
Agincourt by wasteful leud. This unconsciousness of 
the larger interests is perhaps most happily exarapled 
out of his own mouth. When Alengon stood accused 
of betraying Normandy into the hands of the English, 
Charles made a speech in his defence, from which I 
have already quoted more than once. Alengon, he 
said, had professed a great love and trust toward him ; 
'* yet did he give no great proof thereof, when he 
sought to betray Normandy ; whereby he would have 
made me lose an estate of 10,000 livres a year, and 
might have occasioned the destruction of the kingdom 
and of all us Frenchmen." These are the words of 
one, mark you, against whom Gloucester warned the 
English Council because of his " great sublility and 
cautelous disposition." It is not hard to excuse the 
impatience of Louis XL, if such stuff was foisted on 
him by way of political deliberation. 

This incapacity to see things with any greatness, this 
obscure and narrow view, was fundamentally character- 
istic of the man as well as of the epoch. It is not even 
so striking in his public life, where he failed, as in his 
poems, where he notably succeeded. For wherever 
we might expect a poet to be unintelligent, it certainly 
would not be in his poetry. And Charles is unintelli- 
gent even there. Of all authors whom a modern may 
"^till read and read over again with pleasure, he has 
perhaps the least to say. His poems seem to bear 



270 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

testimony rather to the fashion of rhyming, which dis- 
tinguished the age, than to any special vocation in the 
man himself. Some of them are drawing-room exer- 
cises, and the rest seem made by habit. Great writers 
are struck with something in nature or society, with 
which they become pregnant and longing ; they are 
possessed with an idea, and cannot be at peace until 
they have put it outside of them in some distinct em- 
bodiment. But with Charles literature was an object 
rather than a mean ; he was one who loved bandying 
words for its own sake ; the rigidity of intricate metri- 
cal forms stood him in lieu of precise thought ; instead 
of communicating truth, he observed the laws of a 
game ; and when he had no one to challenge at chess 
or rackets, he made verses in a wager against himself. 
From the very idleness of the man's mind, and not 
from intensity of feeling, it happens that all his poems 
are more or less autobiographical. But the}^ form an 
autobiography singularly bald and uneventful. Little 
is therein recorded beside .sentiments. Thoughts, in 
any true sense, he had none to record. And if we 
can gather that he had been a prisoner in England, 
that he had lived in the Orleannese, and that he 
hunted and went in parties of pleasure, I believe it is 
about as much definite experience as is to be found in 
all these five hundred pages of autobiographical verse. 
Doubdess, we find here and there a complaint on the 
progress of the infirmities of age. Doubtless, he feels 
the great change of the year, and distinguishes winter 
from spring ; winter as the time of snow and the fire- 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 271 

side ; spring as the return of grass and flowers, the 
time of St. Valentine's day and a beating heart. And 
he feels love after a fashion. Again and again, we 
learn that Charles of Orleans is in love, and hear him 
ring the changes through the whole gamut of dainty 
and tender sentiment. But there is never a spark of 
passion ; and heaven alone knows whether there was 
any real woman in the matter, or the whole thing was 
an exercise in fancy. If these poems were indeed in- 
spired by some living mistress, one would think he 
had never seen, never heard, and never touched her. 
There is nothing in anyone of these so numerous love- 
songs to indicate who or what the lady was. Was she 
dark or fair, passionate or gentle like himself, witty or 
simple } Was it always one woman } or are there a 
dozen here immortalized in cold indistinction } The 
old English translator mentions gray eyes in his ver- 
sion of one of the amorous rondels ; so far as I re- 
member, he was driven by some emergency of the 
verse ; but in the absence of all sharp lines of charac- 
ter and anything specific, we feel for the moment a 
sort of surprise, as though the epithet were singularly 
happy and unusual, or as though we had made our 
escape from cloudland into something tangible and 
sure. The measure of Charles's indifference to all that 
now preoccupies and excites a poet, .s best given by a 
positive example. If, besides the coming of spring, 
any one external circumstance may be said to have 
struck his imagination, it was the despatch ot/ourriers, 
while on a journey, to prepare the night's lodging. 



272 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

This seems to be his favorite image ; it reappears like 
Jhe upas-tree in the early work ol Coleridge : we may' 
Judge with what childish eyes he looked upon the 
world, if one of the sights which most impiessed himi 
was that of a man going to order dinner. 

Although they are not inspired by any deeper mo- 
tive than the common run of contemporaneous draw- 
ing-room verses, thc^se of Charles of Orleans are ex- 
ecuted with inimitable lightness and delicacy of touch„ 
They deal with floating and colorless sentiments, and 
the wriler is never greatly moved, but he seems always 
genuine. He makes no attempt to set off thin con- 
ceptions with a m_ultiplicity of phrases. Bis ballades 
are generally thin and scanty of iniport ; for the bal- 
lade presented too large a canvas, and he was preoccu- 
pied by technical requirements. But in the rondel he 
has put himself before all competitors by a happy- 
knack and a prevailing distinction of m-anner. He is 
very much more of a dake in his verses than in his 
absurd and inconsequential career as a statesman ;: 
and how he shows himself a duke is precisely by the 
absence of all pretension, turgidity^ or emphasis. He 
turns verses, as he would have come into the king's 
presence, with a quiet accomplishment of grace. 

Theodore de Banville, the youngest poet of a fa- 
mous generation now nearly extinct, and himself a 
sure and finished artist, knocked off, in his happiest 
vein, a lew experiments in imitation of Charles oi 
Orleans. I would recommend these modern rondels 
to all who care about the old duke, nr^t oalv he.cav.se 



CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 273 

they are delightful in themselves, but because they 
serve as a contrast to throw into relief the peculiarities 
of their model. When De Banville revives a forgotten 
form of verse— and he has already had the honor of 
reviving the ballade — he does it in the spirit of a 
workman choosing a good tool wherever he can find 
one, and not at all in that of the dilettante, who seeks 
to renew bygone forms of thought and make historic 
forgeries. With the ballade this seemed natural 
enough ; for in connection with ballades the mind 
recurs to Villon, and Villon was almost more of a 
modern than De Banville himself. But in the case of 
the rondel, a comparison is challenged with Charles of 
Orleans, and the difference betsveen two ages and two 
literatures is illustrated in a few poems of thirteen 
lines. Something, certainly, has been retained of the 
old naovement ; the refrain falls in time like a well- 
played bass ; and the very brevity of the thing, by 
hampering and restraining the greater fecundity of the 
modern mind, assists the imitation. ButDe Banville' s 
poems are full of form and color ; they smack racily 
of modern life, and own small kindred with the verse 
of other days, when it seems as if men walked by twi 
light, seeing little, and that with distracted eyes, and 
instead of blood, some thin and spectral fluid circu- 
lated in their veins. They might gird themselves for 
battle, make love, eat and drink, and acquit them- 
selves manfully in all the external parts of life ; but of 
the life that is within, and those processes by which 
we render ourselves an intelligent account of what we 



2 74 CHARLES OF ORLEANS. 

feel and do, and so represent experience that we for 
the first time make it ours, they had only a loose and 
troubled possession. They beheld or took part in 
great events, but there was no answerable commotion 
in their reflective being ; and they passed throughout 
turbulent epochs in a sort of ghostly quiet and ab- 
straction. Feeling seems to have been strangely dis- 
proportioned to the occasion, and words were laugh- 
ably trivial and scanty to set forth the feeling even such 
as it was. Juvenal des Ursins chronicles calamity 
after calamity, with but one comment for them all : 
that ' ' it was great pity. ' ' Perhaps, after too much 
of our florid literature, we find an adventitious charm 
in what is so different ; and while the big drums are 
beaten every day by perspiring editors over the loss of 
a cock-boat or the rejection of a clause, and nothing 
is heard that is not proclaimed with sound of trumpet, 
it is not wonderful if we retire with pleasure into old 
books, and listen to authors who speak small and 
clear, as if in a private conversation. Truly this is so 
with Charles of Orleans. We are pleased to find a 
small man without the buskin, and obvious senti- 
ments stated without affectation. If the sentiments 
are obvious, there is all the more chance we may have 
experienced the like. As we turn over the leaves, 
we may find ourselves in sympathy with some one or 
other of these staid joys and smiling sorrows. If we 
do we shall be strangely pleased, for there is a genu- 
ine pathos in these simple words, and the lines go 
with a lilt, and sino: themselves to music of their own. 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 

In two books a fresh light has recently been thrown 
on the character and position of Samuel Pepys. Mr. 
Mynors Bright has given us a new transcription of 
the Diarv, increasing it in bulk by near a third, cor- 
recting many errors, and completing our knowledge of 
the man in some curious and important points. We 
can only regret that he has taken liberties with the 
author and the public. It is no part of the duties of 
the editor of an established classic to decide what 
may or may not be "tedious to the reader." The 
book is either an historical document or not. and in 
condemning Lord Braybrooke Mr. Bright condemns 
himself. As for the time-honored phrase, " unfit for 
publication," without being cynical, we may regard 
it as the sign of a precaution more or less commercial ; 
and we miy think, without being sordid, that when 
we purchase six huge and distressingly expensive vol- 
umes, we are entitled to be treated rather more like 
scholars and rather less like children. But Mr. Bright 
may rest assured : while we comphin, we are still 
grateful. Mr. Wneatley, to divide our obligation, 
brings together, clearly and with no lost words, a body 
of iUustrative material. Sometimes we might ask a 
little more ; never, I think, less. And as a matter of 



276 SAMUEL PEP VS. 

fact, a great part of Mr. Wheatley's volume might be 
transferred, by a good editor of Pepys, to the margin 
of the text, for it is precisely what the reader wants. 

In the light of these two books, at least, we have 
now to read our author. Between them they contain 
all we can expect to learn for, it may be, many years. 
Now, if ever, we should be able to form some notion 
of that unparalleled figure in the annals of mankind — • 
unparalleled for three good reasons : first, because he 
was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of 
almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants 
with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room com- 
rade ; second, because he has outstripped all com- 
petitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty 
about oneself ; and, third, because, being in many 
ways a very ordinary person, he has yet placed him- 
self before the public eye with such a fulness and such 
an intimacy of detail as might be envied by a genius 
like Montaigne. Not then for his own sake only, 
but as a character in a unique position, endowed with 
a unique talent, and shedding a unique light upon 
the lives of the mass of mankind, he is surely worthy 
of prolonged and patient study. 

The Diary. 

Thctt there should be such a book as Pepys 's Diary 
iS incomparably strange. Pepys, in a corrupt and 
idle period, played the man in public employments, 
toiling hard and keeping his honor bright. Much of 
the little good that is set down to James the Second 



SAMUEL PEPYS, 277 

comes by right to Pepys ; and if it were little for a 
king, it is much for a subordinate. To his clear, 
capable head was owing somewhat of the greatness ol 
England on the seas. In the exploits of Hawke, 
Rodney, or Nelson, this dead ^Ir. Pepys of the Navy 
Office had some considerable share. He stood well 
by his business in the appalling plague of 1666. He 
was loved and respected by some of the best and 
wisest m.en in England. He was President of the 
Royal Society ; and when he came to die, people said 
of his conduct in that solemn hour — thinking it need- 
less to say more — that it was answerable to the great- 
ness of his life. Thus he walked in dignity, guards of 
soldiers sometimes attending him in his walks, subal- 
terns bowing before his periwig ; and when he uttered 
his thoughts they were suitable to his state and ser- 
vices. On February 8, 1668, we find him writing to 
Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the late Dutch 
war, and some thoughts of the different story of the 
repulse of the Great Armada : " Sir, you will not 
wonder at the backwardness of my thanks for the pres- 
ent you made me, so many days since, of the Prospect 
of the Medway, while the Hollander rode master in 
it, when 1 have told you that the sight of it hath led 
me to such reflections on my particular interest, by 
my employment, in the reproach due to that miscar- 
riage, as have given me little less disquiet than he is 
fancied to have who found his face in INIichael Angelo's 
hell The same should serve me also in excuse for ray 
silence in celebrating your mastery shown in the de* 



278 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

sign and draught, did not indignation rather than 
courtship urge me so far to commend them, as to 
wish the furniture of our House of Lords changed 
from the story of '88 to that of '67 (of Evelyn's de- 
signing), till the pravity of this were reformed to the 
temper of that age, wherein God Almighty found his 
blessings more operative than, I fear, he doth in ours 
his judgments." 

This is a letter honorable to the writer, where the 
meaning rather than the words is eloquent. Such was 
the account he gave of himself to his contemporaries ; 
such thoughts he chose to utter, and in such language : 
giving himself out for a grave and patriotic public ser- 
vant. We turn to the same date in the Diary by which 
he is known, after two centuries, to his descendants. 
The entry begins in the same key with the letter, 
blaming the " madness of the House of Commons" 
and '* the base proceedings, just the epitome of all 
our public proceedings in this age, of the House of 
Lords ;" and then, without the least transition, this 
is how our diarist proceeds : " To the Strand, to my 
bookseller's, and there bought an idle, rogueish French 
book, Vescholle des Filles, which I have bought in 
plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, 
because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn 
it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor 
among them, to disgrace them, if it should be found. " 
Even in our day, when responsibility is so much more 
clearly apprehended, the man who wrote the letter 
would be notable ; but what about the man, I do not 



SAMUEL PEP VS. 279 

say wht) bought a roguish book, but who was ashamed 
of doing so, yet did it, and recorded both the doing 
and the shame in the pages of his daily journal ? 

We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat 
drape ourselves vvhen we address our fellows ; at a 
given moment we apprehend our character and acts by 
some particular side ; we are merry with one, grave 
with another, as befits the nature and demands of the 
relation. Pepys's letter to Evelyn would have little in 
common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he 
signed by the pseudonym of Dapper Dicky j yet each 
would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. 
There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean 
animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company 
and surroundings ; and these changes are the better 
part of his education in the world. To strike a posture 
once for all, and to march through life like a drum- 
major, is to be highly disagreeable to others and a fool 
for oneself into the bargain. To Evelyn and to Knipp 
we understand the double facing ; but to whom was 
he posing in the Diary, and what, in the name of 
astonishment, was the nature of the pose ? Had he 
suppressed all mention of the book, or had he bought 
it, gloried in the act, and cheerfully recorded his glorifi- 
cation, in either case w^e should have made him out. 
But no ; he is full of precautions to conceal the " dis- 
grace" of the purchase, and yet speeds to chronicle 
the whole affair in pen and ink. It is a sort of 
anomaly in human action, which we can exactly 
parallel from another part of the Diary. 



28o SAMUEL PEPYS. 

Mrs. Pepys had written a paper of her too just com- 
plaints against her husband, and written it in plain and 
very pungent English. Pepys, in an agony lest the 
world should come to see it, brutally seizes and destroys 
the tell-tale document ; and then— you disbelieve your 
eyes — down goes the whole story with unsparing 
truth and in the cruellest detail. It seems he has no 
design but to appear respectable, and here he keeps a 
private book to prove he was not. You are at first 
faintly reminded of some of the vagaries of the morbid 
religious diarist ; but at a moment's thought the re- 
semblance disappears. The design of Pepvs is nol at 
all to edify ;. it is not from repentance that he chroni- 
cles his peccadilloes, for he tells us when he does re- 
pent, and, to be just to him, there often follows some 
improvement. Again, the sins of the religious diarist 
are of a very formal pattern, and are told with an 
elaborate whine. But in Pepys you come upon good, 
substantive misdemeanors ; beams in his eye of which 
he alone remains unconscious ; healthy outbreaks of 
the animal nature, and laughable subterfuges to him-' 
self that always command belief and often engage the 
sympathies. 

Pepys was a young man for his age, came slowly to 
himself in the world, sowed his wild oats late, took 
late to industry, and preserved till nearly forty the 
headlong gusto of a boy. So, to come rightly at the 
spirit in which the Diary was written, we must recall a 
class of sentiments which with most of us are over and 
done before the age of twelve. In our tender years 



SAMUEL PEP VS. 281 

we Still preserve a freshness of surprise at our pro- 
longed existence ; events make an impression out of 
all proportion to their consequence ; we are unspeak- 
ably touched by our own past adventures, and look 
forward to our future personality with sentimental in- 
terest. It was something of this, I think, that clung 
to Pepys. Although not sentimental in the abstract, 
he was sweetly sentimental about himself. His own 
past clung about his heart, an evergreen. He was the 
slave of an association. He could not pass by Isling- 
ton, where his father used to carry him to cakes and 
ale, but he must light at the " King's Head " and eat 
and drink " for remembrance of the old house sake." 
He counted it good fortune to lie a night at Epsom to 
renew his old walks, " where Mrs. Hely and I did use 
to walk and talk, with whom I had the first senti- 
ments of love and pleasure in a woman's company, 
discourse and taking her by the hand, she being a 
pretty woman." He goes about weighing up the 
Assurajice, which lay near Woolwich under water, and 
cries in a parenthesis, " Poor ship, that I have been 
tv/ice merry in, in Captain Holland's time ;" and after 
revisiting the Naseby, now changed into the Charles, 
he confesses " it was a great pleasure to myself to see 
the ship that I began my good fortune in." The 
stone that he was cut for he preserved in a case ; and to 
the Turners he kept alive such gratitude for their as- 
sistance that for years, and after he had begun to 
mount himself into higher zones, he continued to have 
that family to dinner on the anniversary of the opera- 



282 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

tion. Not Hazlitt nor Rousseau had a more romantic 
passion for their past, although at times they might 
express it more romantically ; and if Pepys shared 
with them this childish fondness, did not Rousseau, 
who left behind him the Confessions, or Hazlitt, who 
wrote the Liber Amoris, and loaded his essays with 
loving personal detail, share with Pepys in his un- 
wearied egotism ? For the two things go hand in 
hand ; or, to be more exact, it is the first that makes 
the second either possible or pleasing. 

But, to be quite in sympathy with Pepys, we must 
return once more to the experience of children. I 
can remember to have written, in the fly-leaf of more 
than one book, the date and the place where 1 then 
was — if, for instance, I was ill in bed or sitting in a 
certain garden ; these were jottings for my future self ; 
if I should chance on such a note in after years, I 
thought it would cause me a particular thrill to recog- 
nize myself across the intervening distance. Indeed, 
I might come upon them now, and not be moved one 
tittle — which shows that I have comparatively failed in 
life, and grown older than Samuel Pepys. For in the 
Diary we can find more than one such note of perfect 
childish egotism ; as when he explams that his candle 
is going out, " which makes me write thus slobber- 
ingly ;" or as in this incredible particularity, "To 
my study, where I only wrote thus much of this day's 
passages to this *, and so out again ;" or lastly, as 
here, with more of circumstance ; *' I staid up till the 
bellman came by with his bell under mv window, ^75" 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 283 

/ was wriling of this very line, and cried, * Past one 
of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning. ' ' ' 
Such passages are not to be misunderstood. The ap- 
peal to Samuel Pepys years hence is unmistakable. 
He desires that dear, though unknown, gentleman 
keenly to realize his predecessor ; to remember why a 
passage was uncleanly written ; to recall (let us fancy, 
with a sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of the 
early, windy morning, and the very line his own ro- 
mantic self was scribing at the moment. The man, 
you will perceive, was making reminiscences — a sort 
of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many in dis- 
tress, and turns some others into sentimental liber- 
tines : and the whole book, if you will but look at it 
in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys's own 
address. 

Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable at- 
titude preserved by him throughout his Diary, to that 
unflinching — I had almost said, that unintelligent — 
sincerity which makes it a miracle among human 
books. He was not unconscious of his errors — far 
from it ; he was often startled into shame, often re- 
formed, often made and broke his vows of change. 
But whether he did ill or well, he was still his own 
unequalled self ; still that entrancing ego of whom 
alone he cared to write ; and still sure of his own 
affectionate indulgence, when the parts should be 
changed, and the writer come to read what he had 
written. Whatever he did, or said, or thought, or 
suffered, it was still a trait of Pepys, a character of his 



284 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

career ; and as, to himself, he was more interesting 
than Moses or than Alexander, so all should be faith- 
fully set down. I have called his Diary a work of 
art. Now when the artist has found something, word 
or deed, exactly proper to a favorite character in play 
or novel, he will neither suppress nor diminish it, 
though the remark be silly or the act mean." The 
hesitation of Hamlet, the credulity of Othello, the 
baseness of Emma Bovary, or the irregularities of Mr. 
Swiveller, caused neither disappointment nor disgust 
to their creators. And so with Pepys and his adored 
protagonist : adored not blindly, but with trenchant 
insight and enduring, human toleration. I have gone 
over and over the greater part of the Diary ; and the 
points where, to the most suspicious scrutiny, he has 
seemed not perfectly sincere, are so few, so doubtful, 
and so petty, that I am ashamed to name them. ( It 
may be said that we all of us write such a diary in airy 
characters upon our brain ; but I fear there is a dis- 
tinction to be made ; I fear that as we render to our 
consciousness an account of our daily fortunes and 
behavior, we too often weave a tissue of romantic com- 
pliments and dull excuses ; and even if Pepys were 
the ass and coward that men call him, Ave must take 
rank as sillier and more cowardly than he. The bald 
truth about oneself, what we are all too timid to admit 
when we are not too dull to see it, that was what he 
saw clearly and set down unsparingly. 

It is improbable that the Diary can have been car- 
ried on in the same single spirit in which it was be- 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 285 

gun. Pepys was not such an ass, but he must have 
perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of 
the work he was producing. He was a great reader, 
and he knew what other books were like. It must, at 
least, have crossed his mind that some one might ulti- 
mately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with 
all his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some 
later day ; and the thought, although discouraged, 
must have warmed his heart. He was not such an 
ass, besides, but he must have been conscious of the 
deadly explosives, the gun-cotton and the giant pow- 
der, he was hoarding in his drawer. Let some con- 
temporary light upon the Journal, and Pepys was 
plunged forever in social and political disgrace. We 
can trace the growth of his terrors by two facts. In 
1660, while the Diary was still in its youth, he tells 
about it, as a matter of course, to a lieutenant in the 
navy ; but in 1669, when it was already near an end, 
he could have bitten his tongue out, as the saying is, 
because he had let slip his secret to one so grave and 
friendly as Sir William Coventry. And from two other 
facts I think we may infer that he had entertained, 
even if he had not acquiesced in, the thought of a far- 
distant publicity. The first is of capital importance : 
the Diary was not destroyed. The second — that he 
took unusual precautions to confound the cipher in 
'' rogueish" passages— proves, beyond question, that 
he was thinking of some other reader besides himself. 
Perhaps while his friends were admiring the " great- 
ness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he 



286 SAMUEL PEP VS. 

may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens 
cujusque is est qiiisque, said his chosen motto ; and, 
as he had stamped his mind with every crook and 
foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that 
what he left behind him was indeed himself. There 
is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the de- 
sire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The 
greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to com- 
municate its smallness also ; and, while contempo- 
raries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity 
with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. 
But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, 
was neither his first nor his deepest ; it did not color 
one word that he wrote ; and the Diary, for as long as 
he kept it, remained what it was when he began, a 
private pleasure for himself. It was his bosom secret ; 
it added a zest to all his pleasures ; he lived in and 
for it, and might well write these solemn words, when 
he closed that confidant forever : " And so I betake 
myself to that course which is almost as much as to 
see myself go into the grave ; for which, and all the 
discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the 
good God prepare me." 

A Liberal Genius. 

Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when 
he had taken physic, composing " a song in praise of 
a liberal genius (such as I take my own to be) to all 
studies and pleasures. " The song was unsuccessful, 
but the Diary is, in a sense, the very song that he was 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 287 

seeking ; and his portrait by Hales, so admirably re- 
produced in Mynors Bright' s edition, is a confirma- 
tion of the Diary. Hales, it would appear, had known 
his business ; and though he put his sitter (.0 a deal 
of trouble, almost breaking his neck "to have the 
portrait full of shadows, " and draping him in an Ind- 
ian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was pre- 
occupied about no merely picturesque effects, but to 
portray the essence of the man. Whether we read the 
picture by the Diary or the Diary by the picture, we 
shall at least agree that Hales was among the number 
of those who can " surprise the manners in the face." 
Here we have a mouth pouting, moist with desires ; 
eyes greedy, protuberant, and yet apt for weeping too ; 
a nose great alike in character and dimensions ; and 
altogether a most fleshly, melting countenance. The 
face is attractive by its promise of reciprocity. I have 
used the word greedy, but the reader must not sup- 
pose that he can change it for that closely kindred one 
of hungry, for there is here no aspiration, no waiting 
for better things, but an animal joy in all that comes. 
It could never be the face of an artist ; it is the face 
of a viveur — kindly, pleased and pleasing, protected 
from excess and upheld in contentment by the shift- 
ing versatility of his desires. For a sirfgle desire is 
more rightly to be called a lust ; but there is health 
in a variety, where one may balance and control an- 
other. 

The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys a 
garden of Armida. Wherever he went, his steps were 



288 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

winged with the most eager expectation ; whatever tie 
did, it was done with the most lively pleasure. An 
insatiable curiosity in all the shows of the world and 
all the secrets of knowledge, filled him brimful 
of the longing to travel, and supported him in the 
toils of study. Rome was the dream of his life ; he 
was never happier than when he read or talked of the 
Eternal City. When he was in Holland, he was 
" with child " to see any strange thing. Meeting 
some friends and singing with them in a palace near 
the Hague, his pen fails him to express his passion of 
delight, " the more so because in a heaven of pleasure 
and in a strange country." He must go to see all 
famous executions. He must needs visit the body of 
a murdered man, defaced " with a broad wound,"' he 
says, " that makes my hand now shake to write of it." 
He learned to dance, and was ** like to make a 
dancer." He learned to sing, and walked about 
Gray's Inn Fields " humming to myself (which is now 
my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play 
the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and 
it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn 
the harpsichord or the spinet. He learned to com- 
pose songs, and burned to give forth ' ' a scheme and 
theory of music not yet ever made in the world." 
When he heard " a fellow whistle like a bird exceed- 
ing well," he promised to return another day and give 
an angel for a lesson in the art. Once, he writes, " I 
took the Bezan back with me, and with a brave gale 
and tide reached up that night to the Hope, taking 



SAMUEL PEPYS. ^89 

great pleasure in learning the seamen's manner of 
singing when they sound the depths." If he found 
himself rusty in his Latin grammar, he must fall to it 
like a schoolboy. He was a member of Harrington's 
Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society be- 
fore it had received the name. Boyle's Hydrostatics 
was " of infinite delight" to him, walking in Barnes 
Elms. We find him comparing Bible concordances, 
a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and 
Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying 
timber and the measurement of timber ; tar and oil, 
hemp, and the process of preparing cordage ; mathe- 
matics and accounting ; the hull and the rigging of 
ships from a model ; and " looking and improving 
himself of the (naval) stores with" — hark to the fel- 
low ! — "great delight." His familiar spirit of de- 
light was not the same with Shelley's ; but how true 
it was to him through life ! He is only copying some- 
thing, and behold, he " takes great pleasure to rule 
the lines, and have the capital words wrote with red 
ink ;' ' he has only had his coal-cellar emptied and 
cleaned, and behold, " it do please him exceedingly." 
A hog's harslett is " a piece of meat he loves. " He 
cannot ride home in my Lord Sandwich's coach, but 
he must exclaim, with breathless gusto, " his noble, 
rich coach." When he is bound for a supper party, 
he anticipates a " glut of pleasure." When he has a 
new watch, " to see my childishness," says he, '* I 
could not forbear carrying it in my hand and seeing 
what o'clock it was an hundred times." To 2:0 to 



290 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

Vauxhall, he says, and " to hear the nightingales and 
other birds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a 
Jew's trump, and here laughing, and there fine peo- 
ple walking, is mighty divertising. " And the night- 
mgales, 1 take it, were particularly dear to him ; and 
it was again " with great pleasure" that he paused to 
hear them as he walked to Woolwich, while the fog 
was rising and the April sun broke through. 

He must always be doing something agreeable, and, 
by preference, two agreeable things at once. In his 
house he had a box of carpenter's tools, two dogs, an 
eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled tunes, 
lest, even in that full life, he should chance upon an 
empty moment. If he had to wait for a dish of 
poached eggs, he must put in the time by playing on 
the flageolet ; if a sermon were dull, he must read in 
the book of Tobit or divert his mind with sly advances 
on the nearest women. When he walked, it must be 
with a book in his pocket to beguile the way in case 
the nightingales were silent ; and even along the streets 
of London, with so many pretty faces to be spied for 
and dignitaries to be saluted, his trail was marked by 
little debts "for wine, pictures, etc.," the true head- 
mark of a life intolerant of any joyless passage. He 
had a kind of idealism in pleasure ; like the princess 
in the fairy story, he was conscious of a rose-leaf out 
of place. Dearly as he loved to talk, he could not 
enjoy nor shine in a conversation when he thought 
himself unsuitably dressed. Dearly as he loved eat- 
ing, he " knew not how to eat alone ;" pleasure for 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 291 

him must heighten pleasure ; and the eye and ear 
must be flattered hke the palate ere he avow himself 
content. He had no zest in a good dinner when it 
fell to be eaten " in a bad street and in a periwig- 
maker's house ;" and a collation was spoiled for him 
by indifferent music. His body was indefatigable, 
doing him yeoman's service in this breathless chase of 
pleasures. On April 11, 1662, he mentions that he 
went to bed " weary, which I seldom am j" and al- 
ready over thirty, he would sit up all night cheerfully 
to see a comet. But it is never pleasure that exhausts 
the pleasure- seeker ; for in that career, as in all others, 
it is failure that kills. The man who enjoys so wholly 
and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood from 
joy, is just the man to lose a night's rest over some 
paltry question of his right to fiddle on the leads, or 
to be " vexed to the blood" by a solecism in his 
wife's attire ; and we find in consequence that he was 
always peevish when he was hungry, and that his head 
** aked mightily" after a dispute. But nothing could 
divert him from his aim in life ; his remedy in care 
was the same as his delight in prosperity ; it was with 
pleasure, and with pleasure only, that he sought to 
drive out sorrow ; and, whether he was jealous of his 
wife or skulking from a bailiff, he would equally take 
refuge in the theatre. There, if the house be full and 
the company noble, if the songs be tunable, the actors 
perfect, and the play diverting, this odd hero of the 
secret Diary, this private self- adorer, will speedily be 
healed of his distresses. 



292 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

Equally pleased with a watch, a coach, a piece of 
meat, a tune upon the fiddle, or a fact in hydrostatics, 
Pepys was pleased yet more by the beauty, the worth, 
the mirth, or the mere scenic attitude in life of his fel- 
low-creatures. He shows himself throughout a sterling 
humanist. Indeed, he who loves himself, not in idle 
vanity, but with a plenitude of knowledge, is the best 
equipped of all to love his neighbors. And perhaps 
it is in this sense that charity may be most properly 
said to begin at home. It does not matter what qual- 
ity a person has : Pepys can appreciate and love him 
for it He ' fills his eyes" with the beauty of Lady 
Castlemaine ; indeed, he may be said to dote upon 
the thought of her for years ; if a woman be good- 
looking and not painted, he will walk miles to have 
another sight of her ; and even when a lady by a mis- 
chance spat upon his clothes, he was immediately con- 
soled when he had observed that she was pretty. But, 
on the other hand, he is delighted to see Mis. Pett 
upon her knees, and speaks thus of his Aunt James : 
**a poor, religious, well meaning, good soul, talking 
of nothing but God Almighty, and that with so much 
innocence that mightily pleased me." He is taken 
with Pen's merriment and loose songs, but not less 
taken with the sterling worth of Coventry. He is jolly 
with a drunken sailor, but listens with interest and 
patience, as he rides the Essex roads, to the story of a 
Quaker's spiritual trials and convictions. He lends a 
critical ear to the discourse of kings and royal dukes. 
He spends an evening at Vauxhall with " Killigiew 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 293 

and young Newport— loose company," says he, " but 
worth a man's being in for once, to know the nature 
of it, and their manner of talk and lives. " And when 
a rag-boy lights him home, he examines him about 
his business and other ways of livelihood for destitute 
children. This is almost half-way to the beginning of 
philanthropy ; had it only been the fashion, as it is at 
present, Pepys had perhaps been a man iamous for 
good deeds. And it is through this quality that he 
rises, at times, superior to his surprising egotism ; his 
interest in the love affairs of others is, indeed, imper- 
sonal ; he is filled with concern for my Lady Castle- 
maine, whom he only knows by sight, shares in her 
very jealousies, joys with her in her successes ; and it 
is not untrue, however strange it seems in his abrupt 
presentment, that he loved his maid Jane because she 
was in love with his man Tom. 

Let us hear him, for once, at length : " So the 
women and W. Hewerand I walked upon the Downes, 
where a flock of sheep was ; and the most pleasant 
and innocent sight that ever I saw in my life. We 
found a shepherd and his little boy reading, far from 
any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him ; so I 
made the boy read to me, which he did with the forced 
tone that children do usually read, that was mighty 
pretty ; and then I did give him something, and went 
to the father, and talked with him. He did content 
himself mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and 
did bless God for him, the most like one of the old 
patriarchs that ever 1 saw in my life, and it brought 



294 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind 
for two or three days alter. We took notice of his 
woollen knit stockings of two colors mixed, and of his 
shoes shod with iron, both at the toe and heels, and 
with great nails in the soles of his feet, which was 
mighty pretty ; and taking notice of them, ' Why,' 
says the poor man, ' the downes, yon see, are full of 
stones, and we are faine to shoe ourselves thus ; and 
these,' says he, ' will make the stones fly till they ring 
before me. ' I did give the poor man something, for 
which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast 
stones with his home crooke. He values his dog 
mightily, thai would turn a sheep any way which he 
would have him, when he goes to fold them ; told me 
there was about eighteen score sheep in his flock, and 
that he hath four shillings a week the year round for 
keeping of them ; and Mrs. Turner, in the common 
fields here, did gather one of the prettiest nosegays 
that ever I saw in my life." 

And so the story rambles on to the end of that day's 
pleasuring ; with cups of milk, and glowworms, and 
people walking at sundown with their wives and chil- 
dren, and all the way home Pepys still dreaming " of 
the old age of the world "' and the early innocence 
of man. This was how he walked through life, his 
eyes and ears wide open, and bis hand, you will 
observe, not shut ; and thus he observed the lives, 
the speech, and the m.anners of his fellow-men, with 
prose fidelity of detail and yet a lingering glamour of 
romance. 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 295 

It was *' two or three days after" that he extended 
this passage in the pages of his Journal, and the style 
has thus the benefit of some reflection. It is generally 
supposed that, as a writer, Pepys must rank at the 
bottom of the scale of merit. But a style which is 
indefatigably lively, telling, and picturesque through 
six large volumes of everyday experience, which deals 
with the whole matter of a life, and yet is rarely weari- 
some, which condescends to the most fastidious par- 
ticulars, and yet sweeps all away in the forthright cur- 
rent of the narrative, — such a style may be ungram- 
matical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of 
mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The 
first and the true function of the writer has been thor- 
oughly performed throughout ; and though the man- 
ner of his utterance may be childishly awkward, the 
matter has been transformed and assimilated by his 
unfeigned interest and delight. The gusto of the man 
speaks out fierily after all these years. For the differ- 
ence between Pepys and Shelley, to return to that half 
whimsical approximation, is one of quality but not 
one of degree ; in his sphere, Pepys felt as keenly, 
and his is the true prose of poetry — prose because the 
spirit of the man was narrow and earthly, but poetry 
because he was delightedly alive. Hence, in such a 
passage as this about the Epsom shepherd, the result 
upon the reader's mind is entire conviction and un- 
mingled pleasure. So, you feel, the thing fell out, 
not otherwise ; and you would no more change it 
than you would change a sublimity of Shakespeare's, 



296 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

a homely touch of Bunyan's, or a favored reminis- 
cence of your own. 

There never was a man nearer being an artist, who 
yet was not one. The tang was in the family ; while 
he was writing the journal for our enjoyment in his 
comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of 
his cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to 
make music to the country girls. But he himself, 
though he could play so many instruments and pass 
judgment in so many fields of art, remained an am- 
ateur. It is not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, 
without some greater power to understand. That he 
did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage may 
be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or ex- 
cuse. He certainly admired him as a poet ; he was 
the first beyond mere actors on the rolls of that in- 
numerable army who have got " To be or not to be" 
by heart. Nor was he content with that ; it haunted 
his mind ; he quoted it to himself in the pages of the 
Diary, and, rushing in where angels fear to tread, he 
set it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable 
than the heroic quality of the verses that our little sen- 
sualist in a periwig chose out to marry with his own 
mortal strains. Some gust from brave Elizabethan 
times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning 
his sublime theorbo. " To be or not to be. Whether 
'tis nobler" — " Beauty retire, thou dost my pity 
m.ove' ' — " It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome ;" 
— open and dignified in the sound, various and ma- 
jestic in the scntimrnt, it was no inapt, as it was cer- 



SAMUEL PEPYS 297 

tainly no timid, spirit that selected such a range of 
themes. Of " Gaze not on Swans," I know no more 
than these four words ; yet that also seems to promise 
well. It was, however, on a probable suspicion, the 
work of his master, Mr. Berkenshaw — as the drawings 
that figure at the breaking up of a young ladies' sem- 
inary are the work of the professor attached to the es- 
tablishment. i\Ir. Berkenshaw was not altogether 
happy in his pupil. The amateur cannot usually rise 
into the artist, some leaven of the world still clogging 
him ; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank 
to the man who taught him composition. In relation 
to the stage, which he so warmly loved and under- 
stood, he was not only more hearty, but more gener- 
ous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, 
"a man," says he, "who understands and loves a 
play as well as I, and I love him for it. ' ' And again, 
when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous in- 
sipid piece, " Glad we were," he writes, " that Bet- 
terton had no part in it." It is by such a zeal and 
loyalty to those who labor for his delight that the am- 
ateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be 
kept in mind that, not only in art, but in morals, 
Pepys rejoiced to recognize his betters. There was 
no: one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted 
t?gotist. 

Respectability. 

When writers inveigh against respectability, in the 
present degraded meaning of the word, they are usu- 



298 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

ally suspected of a taste for clay pipes and beer cellars ; 
and their performances are thought to hail from the 
OwVs Nest of the comedy. They have something 
more, however, in their eye than the dulness of a 
round million dinner parties that sit down yearly in 
old England. For to do anything because others do 
it, and not because the thing is good, or kind, or hon- 
est in its own right, is to resign all moral control and 
captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste to the devil 
v^^ith the greater number. We smile over the ascen- 
dency of priests ; but I had rather follow a priest than 
what they call the leaders of society. No life can 
better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this 
respectable theory of living. For what can be more 
untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period and 
while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping 
transformation as the return of Charles the Second .? 
Round went the whole fleet of England on the other 
tack ; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still 
sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own pri- 
vate compass, the cock-boat, Pepys, must go about 
with the majority among '* the stupid starers and the 
loud huzzas." 

The respectable are not led so much by any desire 
of applause as by a positive need for countenance. 
The weaker and the tamer the man, the more will he 
require this support ; and any positive quality relieves 
him, by just so much, of this dependence. In a dozen 
ways, Pepys was quite strong enough to please him- 
self without regard for others ; but his positive qualities 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 299 

were not coextensive with the field of conduct ; and in 
many parts of life he followed, with gleeful precision, 
in the footprints of the contemporary Mrs. Grundy. 
In morals, particularly, he lived by the countenance 
of others ; felt a slight from another more keenly than 
a meanness in himself ; and then first repented when 
he was found out. You could talk of religion or mo- 
rality to such a man ; and by the artist side of him, by 
his lively sympathy and apprehension, he could rise, 
as it were dramatically, to the significance of what you 
said. All that matter in religion which has been nick- 
named other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut ; 
but a rule of life that should make a man rudely vir- 
tuous, following right in good report and ill report, 
was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He 
was much thrown across the Friends ; and nothing 
can be more instructive than his attitude toward these 
most interesting people of that age. I have mentioned 
how he conversed with one as he rode ; when he saw 
some brought from a meeting under arrest, " I would 
to God," said he, '* they would either conform, or be 
more wise and not be catched ;" and to a Quaker in 
his own office he extended a timid though effectual 
protection. Meanwhile there was growing up next 
door to him that beautiful nature, William Pen. It 
is odd that Pepys condemned him for a fop ; odd, 
though natural enough when you see Pen's portrait, 
that Pepys was jealous of him with his wife. But the 
cream of the story is when Pen publishes his Sandy 
Foundation Shaken, and Pepys has it read aloud by his 



300 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

wife. ** I find it," he says, '* so well writ as, I think, 
it is too good for him ever to have writ it ; and it is a 
serious sort oi book, and not fd for everybody to read." 
Nothing is more galling to ihe merely respectable than 
to be brought in contact with religious ardor. Pepys 
had his own foundation, sandy enough, but dear to 
him from practical considerations, and he would read 
the book with true uneasiness of spirit ; for conceive 
the blow if, by some plaguy accident, this Pen were to 
convert him 1 It was a different kind of doctrine that 
he judged profitable for himself and others. " A good 
sermon of, Mr. Gifford's at our church, upon ' Seek 
ye first the kingdom of heaven.' A very excellent and 
persuasive, good and moral sermon. He showed, like 
a wise man, that righteousness is a surer moral way of 
being rich than sin and villainy." It is thus that 
respectable people desire to have their Greathearts 
address them, telling, in mild accents, how you may 
make the best of both worlds, and be a moral hero 
without courage, kindness, or troublesome reflection ; 
and thus the Gospel, cleared of Eastern metaphor, be- 
comes a manual of worldly prudence, and a handy- 
book for Pepys and the successful merchant. 

The respectability of Pepys was deeply grained. He 
has no idea of truth except for the Diary. He has no 
care that a thing shall be, if it but appear ; gives out 
that he has inherited a good estate, when he has seem- 
ingly got nothing but a lawsuit ; and is pleased to be 
thought liberal when he knows he has been mean. 
He is conscientiously osienlauous, I say conscien- 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 301 

tiously, with reason. He could never have been 
taken for a fop, like Pen, but arrayed himself in a 
manner nicely suitable to his position. For long he 
hesitated to assume the famous periwig ; for a public 
man should travel gravely with the fashions, not fop- 
pishly before, nor dowdily behind, the central move- 
ment of his age. For long he durst not keep a car- 
riage ; that, in his circumstances, would have been 
improper ; but a times comes, with the growth of his 
fortune, when the impropriety has shifted to the other 
side, and he is " ashamed to be seen in a hackney." 
Pepys talked about being " a Quaker or some very 
melancholy thing ;" for my part, I can imagine noth- 
ing so melancholy, because nothing half so silly, as to 
be concerned about such problems. But so respect- 
abiUty and the duties of society haunt and burden 
their poor devotees ; and what seems at first the very 
primrose path of life, proves difficult and thorny like 
the rest. And the time comes to Pepys, as to all the 
merely respectable, when he must not only order his 
pleasures, but even clip his virtuous movements, to 
the public patter of the age. There was some jug- 
gling among officials to avoid direct taxation ; and 
Pepys, with a noble impulse, growing ashamed of this 
dishonesty, designed to charge himself with £1000 ; 
hut finding none to set him an example, " nobody of 
our ablest merchants" with this moderate liking for 
clean hands, he judged it " not decent ;" he feared it 
would "be thought vain glory;" and, rather than 
appear singular, cheerfully remained a thief. One 



302 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

able merchant's countenance, and Pepys had dared 
to do an honest act ! Had he found one brave spirit, 
properly recognized by society, he might have gone 
far as a disciple. Mrs. Turner, it is true, can fill 
him full of sordid scandal, and make him believe, 
against the testimony of his senses, that Pen's venison 
pasty stank like the devil ; but, on the other hand, 
Sir William Coventry can raise him by a word into 
another being. Pepys, when he is with Coventry, 
talks in the vein of an old Roman. What does he 
care for office or emolument .? " Thank God, I have 
enough of my own, ' ' says he, ' ' to buy me a good 
book and a good fiddle, and I have a good wife." 
And again, we find this pair projecting an old age 
when an ungrateful country shall have dismissed them 
from the field of public service ; Coventry living re- 
tired in a fine house, and Pepys dropping in, ' * it may 
be, to read a chapter of Seneca. ' ' 

Under this influence, the only good one in his life, 
Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in 
his employment. He would not be " bribed to be 
unjust," he says, though he was " not so squeamish 
as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to 
have received no wrong. His new arrangement for 
the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest 
complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain 
Pepys three hundred pounds a year, — a statement 
which exactly fixes the degree of the age's enlighten- 
ment. But for his industry and capacity no praise 
can be too high. It was an unending struggle for the 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 303 

man to stick to his business in such a garden of Armi- 
da as he found this hfe ; and the story of his oaths, 
so often broken, so courageously renewed, is worthy 
rather of admiration than the contempt it has re- 
ceived. 

Elsewhere, and beyond the sphere of Coventry's in- 
fluence, we find him losing scruples and daily com- 
plying further v/ith the age. When he began the 
Journal, he was a trifle prim and puritanic ; merry 
enough, to be sure, over his private cups, and still re- 
membering Magdalene ale and his acquaintance with 
Mrs. Ainsworth of Cambridge. But youth is a hot 
season with all ; when a man smells April and May 
he is apt at times to stumble ; and in spite of a disor- 
dered practice, Pepys's theory, the better things that 
he approved and followed after, we may even say were 
strict. Where there was " tag, rag, and bobtail, 
dancing, singing, and drinking," he felt "ashamed, 
and went away;" and when he slept in church, he 
prayed God forgive him. In but a little while we 
find him with some ladies keeping each other awake 
" from spite," as though not to sleep in church were 
an obvious hardship ; and yet later he calmly passes 
the time of service, looking about him, with a per- 
spective glass, on all the pretty women. His favorite 
ejaculation, " Lord 1" occurs but once that I have 
observed in 1660, never in '61, twice in '62, and at 
].east five times in '63 ; after which the " Lords" may 
be said to pullulate like herrings, with here and there 
a solitary " damned," as it were a whale among the 



304 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

shoal. He and his wife, once filled with dudgeon o)! 
some innocent freedoms at a marriage, are soon con- 
tent to go pleasuring with my Lord Brouncker's mis- 
tress, who was not even, by his own account, the 
most discreet of mistresses. Tag, rag, and bobtail, 
dancing, singing, and drinking, become his naturali 
element ; actors and actresses and drunken, roaring 
courtiers are to be found in his society ; until the man 
grew so involved with Saturnalian manners and com- 
panions that he was shot almost unconsciously into 
the grand domestic crash of 1668. 

That was the legitimate issue and punishment ol 
years of staggering walk and conversation. The man 
who has smoked his pipe for half a century in a pow- 
der magazine finds himself at last the author and the 
victim, of a hideous disaster. So with our pleasant- 
minded Pepys and his peccadilloes. All of a sudden^ 
as he still trips dexterously enough among the dangers 
of a double-faced career, thinking, no great evil, hum- 
ming to himself the Irillo', Fate takes the further con- 
duct of that matter from his hands, and brings him 
lace to face with the consequences of his acts. For a 
man still, after so many years, the lover, although not 
the constant lover, of his wife, — for a man, besides,, 
who was so greatly careful of appearances, — the reve- 
lation of his infidelities was a crushing blow. The 
tears that he shed, the indignities that he endured, 
are not to be measured. A vulgar woman, and novi 
justly incensed, Mrs. Pepys spared him no detail ol 
suffering. She was violent, threatening him with the 



SAMUEL PEPYS. 305 

tongs ; she was careless of his honor, driving him to 
insult the mistress whom she had driven him to betray 
and to discard ; worst of all, she was hopelessly incon- 
sequent, in word and thought and deed, now lulling 
hmi with reconciliations, and anon flaming forth again 
with the original anger. Pepys had not used his wife 
well ; he had wearied her with jealousies, even while 
himself unfaithful ; he had grudged her clothes and 
pleasures, while lavishing both upon himself ; he had 
abused her in words ; he had bent his fist at her in 
anger ; he had once blacked her eye ; and it is one 
of the oddest particulars in that odd Diary of his, that, 
while the injury is referred to once in passing, there is 
no hint as to the occasion or the manner of the blow. 
But now, when he is in the wrong, nothing can ex- 
ceed the long-suffering affection of this impatient hus- 
band. While he was still sinning and still undiscov- 
ered, he seems not to have known a touch of penitence 
stronger than what might lead him to take his wife to 
the theatre, or for an airing, or to give her a new 
dress, by way of compensation. Once found out, 
however, and he seems to himself to have lost all claim 
to decent usage. It is perhaps the strongest instance 
of his externality. His wife may do what she pleases, 
and though he may groan, it will never occur to him 
to blame her ; he has no weapon left but tears and the 
most abject submission. We should perhaps have re- 
spected him more had he not given way so utterly- 
above all, had he refused to write, under his wife's 
dictation, an insulting letter to his unhappy fellow- 



3o6 SAMUEL PEPYS. 

culprit, Miss Willet ; but somehow I believe we like 
him better as he was. 

The death of his wife, following so shortly after, 
must have stamped the impression of this episode upon 
his mind. For the remaining years of his long life 
we have no Diary to help us, and we have seen al- 
ready how little stress is to be laid upon the tenor of 
his correspondence ; but what with the recollection 
of the catastrophe of his married life, what with the 
natural influence of his advancing years and reputa- 
tion, it seems not unlikely that the period of gallantry 
was at an end for Pepys ; and it is beyond a doubt 
that he sat down at last to an honored and agreeable 
old age among his books and music, the correspondent 
of Sir Isaac Newton, and, in one instance at least, the 
poetical counsellor of Dryden. Through all this 
period, that Diary which contained the secret memoirs 
of his life, with all its inconsistencies and escapades, 
had been religiously preserved ; nor, when he came to 
die, does he appear to have provided for its destruc- 
tion. So we may conceive him faithful to the end to 
all his dear and early memories ; still mindful of 
Mrs. Hely in the woods at Epsom ; still lighting at 
Islington for a cup of kindness to the dead ; still, if 
he heard again that air that once so much disturbed 
him, thrilling at the recollection of the love that bound 
him to his wife. 



JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO 
WOMEN. 

I. —The Controversy about Female Rule. 

When first the idea became widely spread among 
men that the Word of God, instead of being truly the 
foundation of all existing institutions, was rather a 
stone which the builders had rejected, it was but 
natural that the consequent havoc among received 
opinions should be accompanied by the generation of 
many new and lively hopes for the future. Some« 
what as in the early days of the French Revolution, 
men must have looked for an immediate and uni- 
versal improvement in their condition. Christianity, 
up to that time, had been somewhat of a failure politi- 
cally. The reason was now obvious, the capital flaw 
was detected, the sickness of the body politic traced at 
last to its efficient cause, it was only necessary to 
put the Bible thoroughly into practice to set them- 
selves strenuously to realize in life the Holy Common- 
wealth, and all abuses and iniquities would surely 
pass away. Thus, in a pageant played at Geneva in 
the year 1523, the world was represented as a sick 
man at the end of his wits for help, to whom his doc- 
tor recommends Lutheran specifics. * 

^jGaberel's Eglise de GeJiive-, i. 88. 



3o8 JOHN KNOX 

The Reformers themselves had set their affections 
in a different world, and professed to look for the 
finished result of their endeavors on the other side of 
death. They took no interest in politics as such ; 
they even condemned political action as Antichiistian : 
notably, Luther in the case of the Peasants' War. 
And yet, as the purely religious question was insepa- 
rably complicated with political difBculties, and they 
had to make opposition, from day to day, against 
principalities and powers, they were led, one alter an- 
other, and again and again, to leave the sphere which 
was more strictly their own, and meddle, for good 
and evil, with the affairs of State. Not much was to 
be expected from interference in such a spirit. 
Whenever a minister found himself galled or hindered, 
he would be inclined to suppose some contravention 
of the Bible. Whenever Christian liberty was restrained 
(and Christian liberty for each individual would be 
about coextensive with what he wished to do), it was 
obvious that the State was Antichristian. The great 
thing, and the one thing, was to push the Gospel and 
the Reformers' own interpretation of it. Whatever 
helped was good ; whatever hindered was evil ; and if 
this simple classification proved inapplicable over the 
whole field, it was no business of his to stop and rec- 
oncile incongruities. He had more pressing concerns 
on hand ; he had to save souls ; he had to be about 
his Father's business. Thisshort-sighted view resulted 
in a doctrine that was actually Jesuitical in application. 
They had no serious ideas upon politics, and the) 



yy 



AND HIS RELATIONS 7^0 WOMEN. 309 

«^'ere ready, nay, they seemed almost bound, to adopt 
and support whichever ensured for the moment the 
greatest benefit to the souls of their fellow-men. They 
were dishonest in all rincerity. Thus Labitte, in the 
introduction to a book ^ in which he exposes the 
hypocritical democracy of the Catholics under the 
League, steps aside for a moment to stigmatize the 
hypocritical democracy of the Protestants. And no- 
where was this expediency in political questions more 
apparent than about the question of female sovereignty. 
So much was this the case that one James Thomasius, 
of Leipsic, wrote a little paper "- about the religious 
partialities of those who took part in the controversy, 
in which some of these learned disputants cut a very 
sorry figure. 

Now Knox has been from the first a man well 
hated ; and it is somewhat characteristic of his luck 
that he figures here in the very forefront of the list of 
partial scribes who trimmed their doctrine with the 
wind in ail good conscience, and were political weather- 
cocks out of conviction. Not only has Thomasius 
mentioned him, but Bayle has taken the hint from 
Thomasius, and dedicated a long note to the matter 
at the end of his article on the Scotch Reformer. 
This is a little less than fair. If any one among the 
evangelists of that period showed more serious politi* 
cal sense than another, it was assuredly Knox ; and 



* La Di7nocratie chez les Prddicateurs de la Ligue. 

* Hisforia ajfecttmm se iminiscentium controversice de syneecocratia. 
It is in his collected prefaces, Leipsic, 1683. 



3IO JOHN KNOX 

even in this very matter of female rule, although I do 
not suppose any one nowadays will feel inclined to 
endorse his sentiments, I confess I can make great 
allowance for his conduct. The controversy, besides, 
has an interest of its own, in view of later controversies. 
John Knox, from 1556 to 1559, was resident in 
Geneva, as minister, jointly with Goodman, of a little 
church of English refugees. He and his congregation 
were banished from England by one woman, Mary 
Tudor, and proscribed in Scotland by another, the 
Regent Mary of Guise. The coincidence was tempt- 
ing : here were many abuses centring about one 
abuse ; here was Christ's Gospel persecuted in the 
two kingdoms by one anomalous posver. He had 
not far to go to find the idea that female government 
was anomalous. It was an age, indeed, in which 
women, capable and incapable, played a conspicuous 
part upon the stage of European history ; and yet 
their rule, whatever may have been the opinion of 
here and there a wise man or enthusiast, was regarded 
as an anomaly by the great bulk of their contempo- 
raries. It was defended as an anomaly. It, and all 
that accompanied and sanctioned it, was set aside as 
a single exception ; and no one thought of reasoning 
down from queens and extending their privileges to 
ordinary women. Great ladies, as we know, had the 
privilege of entering into monasteries and cloisters, 
otherwise forbidden to their sex. As with one thing, 
so with another. Thus, Margaret of Navarre wrote 
books with great acclamation, and no one, seemingly, 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 311 

saw fit to call her conduct in question ; but Made- 
moiselle de Gournay, Montaigne's adopted daughter, 
was in a controversy with the world as to whether a 
woman might be an author without incongruity. 
Thus, too, we have Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne 
writing to his daughters about the learned women of 
his century, and cautioning them, in conclusion, that 
the study of letters was unsuited to ladies of a mid- 
dling station, and should be reserved for princesses. ' 
And once more, if we desire to see the same princi- 
ple carried to ludicrous extreme, we shall find that 
Reverend Father in God the Abbot of Brantome, 
claiming, on the authority of some lord of his ac- 
quaintance, a privilege, or rather a duty, of free love 
for great princesses, and carefully excluding other 
ladies from the same gallant dispensation." One sees 
the spirit in which these immunities were granted ; 
and how they were but the natural consequence of 
that awe for courts and "kings that made the last writer 
tell us, with simple wonder, how Catherine de Medici 
would " laugh her fill just like another" over the 
humors of pantaloons and zanies. And such servility 
was, of all things, what would touch most nearly the 
republican spirit of Knox. It was not difficult lor 
him to set aside this weak scruple of loyalty. The 
lantern of his analysis did not always shine with a 
very serviceable light ; but he had the virtue, at least, 
to carry it into many places of fictitious holiness, and 
was not abashed by the tinsel divinity that hedged 

^ CEuvres de d' A udigtie, i. 449. 2 Dames Iliustres, pp. 358-360, 



312 JOHN KNOX 

kings and queens from his contemporaries. And so 
he could put the proposition in the form already men- 
tioned : there was Christ's Gospel persecuted in the 
two kingdoms by one anomalous power ; plainly, 
then, the " regiment of women" was Antichristian. 
Early in 1558 he communicated this discovery to the 
world, by publishing at Geneva his notorious book — 
The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous 
Regiment of Women. ' 

As a whole, it is a dull performance ; but the 
preface, as is usual with Knox, is both interesting and 
morally fine. Knox was not one of those who are 
humble in the hour of triumph ; he was aggressive 
even when things were at their worst. He had a 
grim reliance in himself, or rather in his mission ; if 
he were not sure that he was a great man, he was at 
least sure that he was one set apart to do great things. 
And he judged simply that whatever passed in his 
mind, whatever moved him to flee from persecution 
instead of constantly facing it out, or, as here, to 
publish and withhold his name from the title-page of 
a critical work, would not fail to be of interest, per- 
haps of benefit, to the world. There may be some- 
thing more finely sensitive in the modern humor, that 
tends more and more to withdraw a man's personality 
from the lessons he inculcates or, the cause that he 
has espoused ; but there is a loss herewith of whole- 
some responsibility ; and when we find in the works 
of Knox, as in the Epistles of Paul, the man himself 

1 Works of John Knox, iv. 349. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 313 

Standing nakedly forward, courting and anticipating 
criticism, jutting his character, as it were, in pledjre 
for the sincerity of his doctrine, we had best waive the 
question of delicacy, and make our acknowledgments 
for a lesson of courage, not unnecessary in these days 
of anonymous criticism, and much light, otherwise 
unattainable, on the spirit in which great movements 
were initiated and carried forward. Knox's personal 
revelations are always interesting ; and, in the case of 
the " First Blast," as I have said, there is no exception 
to the rule. He begins by stating the solemn re- 
sponsibility of all who are watchmen over God's 
flock ; and all are watchmen (he goes on to explain, 
with that fine breadth of spirit that characterizes him 
even when, as here, he shov/s himself most narrow), 
all are watchmen *' whose eyes God doth open, and 
whose conscience he pricketh to admonish the un- 
godly." And with the full consciousness of this 
great duty before him, he sets himself to answer the 
scruples of timorous or worldly-minded people. 
How can a man repent, he asks, unless the nature of 
his transgression is made plain to him .? " And there- 
fore I say," he continues, " that of necessity it is that 
this monstriferous empire of w^omen (which among all 
enormities that this day do abound upon the face of 
the whole earth, is most detestable and damnable) be 
openly and plainly declared to the world, to the end 
that some may repent and be saved." To those who 
think the doctrine useless, because it cannot be ex- 
pected to amend those princes whom it would dis- 



314 JOHN KNOX 

possess if once accepted, he makes answer in a strain 
that shows him at his greatest. After having instanced 
how the rumor of Christ's censures found its way to 
Herod in his own court, "even so," he continues, 
*' may the sound of our weak trumpet, by the support 
of some wind (blow it from the south, or blow it from 
the north, it is of no matter), come to the ears of the 
chief offenders. But whether it do or not, yet dare we 
not cease to blow as God will give strength. For we are 
debtors to more than to princes, to ivit, to the great 
multitude of our brethren, of whom, no doubt, a great 
number have heretofore offended by error and igno- 
rance." 

It is for the multitude, then, he writes ; he does not 
greatly hope that his trumpet will be audible in palaces, 
or that crowned women will submissively discrown 
themselves at his appeal ; what he does hope, in plain 
English, is to encourage and justify rebellion ; and we 
shall see, before we have done, that he can put his 
purpose into words as roundly as I can put it for him. 
This he sees to be a matter of much hazard ; he is 
not " altogether so brutish and insensible, but that he 
has laid his account what the finishing of the work 
may cost.'' He knows that he will find many ad- 
versaries, since " to the most part of men, lawful and 
godly appeareth whatsoever antiquity hath received." 
He looks for opposition, " not only of the ignorant 
multitude, but of the wise, politic, and quiet spirits 
of the earth.' ' He will be called foolish, curious, de- 
spiteful, and a sower of sedition ; and one day, per- 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 315 

haps, for all he is now nameless, he may be attainted 
of treason. Yet he has " determined to obey God, 
notwithstanding that the world shall rage thereat." 
Finally, he makes some excuse for the anonymous 
appearance of this first instalment : it is his purpose 
thrice to blow the trumpet in this matter, if God so 
permit ; twice he intends to do it without name ; but 
at the last blast to take the odium upon himself, that 
all others may be purged. 

Thus he ends the preface, and enters upon his argu- 
ment with a secondary title : " The First Blast to 
awake Women degenerate." We are in the land of 
assertion without delay. That a woman should bear 
rule, superiority, dominion or empire over any realm, 
nation, or city, he tells us, is repugnant to nature, 
contumely to God, and a subversion of good order. 
Women are weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish. 
God has denied to woman wisdom to consider, or 
providence to foresee, what is profitable to a comm.on- 
wealth. Women have been ever lightly esteemed ; 
they have been denied the tutory of their own sons, 
and subjected to the unquestionable sway of their hus- 
bands ; and surely it is irrational to give the greater 
where the less has been withheld, and suffer a woman 
to reign supreme over a great kingdom who would be 
allowed no authority by her own fireside. He appeals 
to the Bible ; but though he makes much of the first 
transgression and certain strong texts in Genesis and 
Paul's Epistles, he does not appeal with entire success. 
The cases of Deborah and Huldah can be brought into 



3i6 JOHN KNOX 

no sort of harmony with his thesis. Indeed, I may 
say that, logically, he left his bones there ; and that it 
is but the phantom of an argument that he parades 
thenceforward to the end. Well was it for Knox that 
he succeeded no better ; it is under this very am- 
biguity about Deborah that we shall find him fain to 
creep for shelter before he is done with the regiment 
of women.- After having thus exhausted Scripture, 
and formulated its teaching in the somewhat blas- 
phemous maxim that the man is placed above the 
woman, even as God above the angels, he goes on 
triumphantly to adduce the testimonies of TertuUian, 
Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, and the 
Pandects ; and having gathered this little cloud of 
witnesses about him, like pursuivants about a herald, 
he solemnly proclaims all reigning women to be 
traitoresses and rebels against God ; discharges all 
men thenceforward from holding any office under such 
monstrous regiment, and calls upon all the lieges with 
one consent to " sludy to repress the inordinate pride 
i/ and tyranny' of queens. If this is not treasonable 
teaching, one would be glad to know what is ; and 
yet, as if he feared he had not made the case plain 
enough against himself, he goes on to deduce the 
startling corollary that all oaths of allegiance must be 
incontinently broken. If it was sin thus to have 
sworn even in ignorance, it were obstinate sin to con- 
tinue to respect them after fuller knowledge. Then 
comes the peroration, in which he cries aloud against 
*he cruelties of that cursed Jezebel of England — that 



AND HIS DELATIONS TO WOMEN. 317 

horrible monster Jezebel of England ; and after hav. 
ing predicted sudden destruction to her rule and to 
the rule of all crowned women, and warned all men 
that if they presume to defend the same when any 
"noble heart" shall be raised up to vindicate the 
liberty of his country, they shall not fail to perish 
themselves in the ruin, he concludes with a last 
rhetorical flourish: "And therefore let all men be 
advertised, for the Trumpet hath once blown." 

The capitals are his own. In writing, he probably 
felt the want of some such reverberation of the pulpit 
under strong hands as he was wont to emphasize his 
spoken utterances withal ; there would seem to him a 
want of passion in the orderly lines of type ; and I 
suppose we may take the capitals as a m.ere substitute 
for the great voice with which he would have given it 
forth, had we heard it from his own lips. Indeed, as 
it is, in this little strain of rhetoric about the trumpet, 
this current allusion to the fall of Jericho, that alone 
distinguishes his bitter and hasty production, he was 
probably right, according to all artistic canon, thus to 
support and accentuate in conclusion the sustained 
metaphor of a hostile proclamation. " It is curious, by 
the way, to note how favorite an image the trumpet was 
with the Reformer. He returns to it again and again ; 
it is the Alpha and Omega of his rhetoric ; it is to him 
what a ship is to the stage sailor ; and one would al- 
most fancy he had begun the world as a trumpeter's 
apprentice. The partiality is surely characteristic. 
All his life long he was blowing summonses before 



3i8 JOHN KNOX 

various Jerichos, some of which fell duly, but not all. 
Wherever he appears in history his speech is loud, 
angry, and hostile ; there is no peace in his life, and 
little tenderness ; he is always sounding hopefully to 
the front for some rough enterprise. And as his voice 
had something of the trumpet's hardness, it had some- 
thing also of the trumpet's warlike inspiration. So 
Randolph, possibly fresh from the sound of the Re- 
former's preaching, writes of him to Cecil : — " Where 
your honor exhorteth us to stoutness, I assure you the 
voice of one man is able, in an hour, to put more life 
in us than six hundred trumpets continually blustering 
in our ears." ^ 

Thus was the proclamation made. Nor was it long 
in wakening all the echoes of Europe. What success 
might have attended it, had the question decided been 
a purely abstract question, it is difficult to say. As it 
was, it was to stand or fall, not by logic, but by polit- 
ical needs and sympathies. Thus, in France, his doc- 
trine was to have some future, because Protestants 
suffered there under the feeble and treacherous regency 
of Catherine de Medici ; and thus it was to have no 
future anywhere else, because the Protestant interest 
was bound up with the prosperity of Queen Elizabeth. 
This stumbling-block lay at the very threshold of the 
matter ; and Knox, in the text of the " First Blast," 
had set everybody the wrong example and gone to the 
ground himself. He finds occasion to regret " the 
blood of innocent Lady Jane Dudley." But Lady 

1 M'Crie's Life of Knox ^ ii. 41. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 319 

Jane Dudley, or Lady Jane Grey, as we call her, was 
a would be traitoress and rebel against God, to use 
his own expressions. If, therefore, political and re- 
ligious sympathy led Knox himself into so grave a 
partiality, what was he to expect from his disciples ? 
If the trumpet gave so ambiguous a sound, who could 
heartily prepare himself for the battle ? The question 
whether Lady Jane Dudley was an innocent martyr, 
or a traitoress against God, whose inordinate pride and 
tyranny had been effectually repressed, was thus left 
altogether in the wind ; and it was not, perhaps, won- 
derful if many of Knox's readers concluded that all 
right and wrong in the matter turned upon the degree 
of the sovereign's orthodoxy and possible helpfulness 
to the Reformation. He should have been the more 
careful of such an ambiguity of meaning, as he must 
have known well the lukewarm indifference and dis- 
honesty of his fellow-reformers in political matters. 
^ He had already, in 1556 or 1557, talked the matter 
over with his great master, Calvin, in " a private con- 
versation ;" and the interview^ must have been truly 
distasteful to both parties. Calvin, indeed, went a far 
way with him in theory, and owned that the ** gov- 
ernment of women was a deviation from the original 
and proper order of nature, to be ranked, no less than 
slavery, among the punishments consequent upon the 
fall of man." But, in practice, their two roads sepa= 
rated. For the Man of Geneva saw difficult'.es in the 
way of the Scripture proof in the cases of Deborah and 

1 Described by Calvin in a letter to Cecil. Knox's M'orks. vol. iv. 



320 JOHN KNOX 

Huldah, and in the prophecy of Isaiah that queens 
should be the nursing mothers of the Church. And 
as the Bible was not decisive, he thought the subject 
should be let alone, because " by custom and public 
consent and long practice, it has been established that 
realms and principalities may descend to females by 
hereditary right, and it would not be lawful to unset- 
tle governments which are ordained by the peculiar 
providence of God." I imagine Knox's ears must 
have burned during this interview. Think of him 
listening dutifully to all this — how it would not do to 
meddle with anointed kings — how there was a peculiar 
providence in these great affairs ; and then think of 
his own peroration, and the *' noble heart" whom he 
boks for " to vindicate the liberty of his country ;" 
or his answer to Queen Mary, when she asked him 
who he was, to interfere in the affairs of Scotland : — 
•' Madam, a subject born within the same !" In- 
deed, the two doctors who differed at this private con- 
versation represented, at the moment, two principles 
of enormous import in the subsequent history of Eu- 
rope. In Calvin we have represented that passive 
obedience, that toleration of injustice and absurdity, 
that holding back of the hand from political affairs as 
from something unclean, which lost France, if we are 
to believe M. Michelet, for the Reformation ; a spirit 
necessarily fatal in the long run to the existence of any 
sect that may profess it ; a suicidal doctrine that sur- 
vives among us to this day in narrow views of personal 
duty, and the low political morality of many virtuo'ug 



AND HIS KELATIONS TO WOMEN. 32 1 

men. In Knox, on the other hand, we see foreshad- 
owed the whole Puritan Revolution and the scaffold of 
Charles I. ~' 

There is little doubt in my mind that this interview 
was what caused Knox to print his book without a 
name. ^ " It was a dangerous thing to contradict the 
Man of Geneva, and doubly so, surely, when one had 
had the advantage of correction from him in a private 
conversation ; and Knox had his little flock of English 
refugees to consider. If they had fallen into bad odor 
at Geneva, where else was there left to flee to ? It 
was printed, as I said, in 1558 ; and, by a singular 
mal-d-propos, in that same year ]\Iary died, and Eliza- 
beth succeeded to the throne of England. And just 
as the accession of Catholic Queen ]Mary had con- 
demned female rule in the eyes of Knox, the accession 
of Protestant Queen Elizabeth justified it in the eyes 
of his colleagues. Female rule ceases to be an anom- 
aly, not because Elizabeth can " reply to eight am- 
bassadors in one day in their different languages," but 
because she represents for the moment the political 
future of the Reformation. The exiles troop back to 
England with songs of praise in their mouths. The 
bright occidental star, of which we have all read in the 
Preface to the Bible, has risen over the darkness of 
Europe. There is a thrill of hope through the perse- 
cuted Churches of the Continent. Calvin writes to 

^ It was anonymously published, but no o le seems to have been in 
doubt about its authorship ; he might as well have set his name to it, for 
all the good he got by holding it back. 



322 JOHN KNOX 

Cecil, washing his hands of Knox and his political 
heresies. The sale of the " First Blast" is prohibited 
in Geneva ; and along with it the bold book of Knox's 
colleague, Goodman— a book dear to Milton— where 
female rule was briefly characterized as a " monster in 
nature and disorder among men." ' Any who may 
ever have doubted, or been for a moment led away by 
Knox or Goodman, or their own wicked imaginations, 
are now more than convinced. They have seen the 
occidental star. Aylmer, with his eye set greedily on 
a possible bishopric, and " the better to obtain the 
favor of the new Queen," " sharpens his pen to con- 
found Knox by logic. What need } He has been 
confounded by facts. " Thus what had been to the 
refugees of Geneva as the very word of God, no sooner 
were they back in England than, behold ! it was the 
word of the devil." ^ 

Now, what of the real sentiments of these loyal sub- 
jects of Elizabeth ? They professed a holy horror for 
Knox's position : let us see if their own would please 
a modern audience any better, or was, in substance, 
greatly different. 

John Aylmer, afterward Bishop of London, pub- 
lished an answer to Knox, under the title of An Har- 
bour for Faithful and true Subjects against the late Blown 
Blast, concerning the goverfi?nent of Women.* And 

' Knox's Works, Iv. 358. ^ Strype's Ay biter, p. 16. 

3 It may interest the reader to know that these (so says Thomasius) are 
the "ipsissima verba Schlusselburgii." 

4 I am indebted for a sight of this book to the kindness of Mr. David 
Laing, the editor of Knox's V/orks. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 323 

certainly he was a thought more acute, a thought less 
precipitate and simple, than his adversary. He is not 
to be led away by such captious terms as natural and 
tiiinaiural. It is obvious to him that a woman's dis- 
ability to rule is not natural in the same sense in which 
it is natural for a stone to fall or fire to burn. He is 
doubtful, on the whole, whether this disability be 
natural at all ; nay, when he is laying it down that a 
woman should not be a priest, he shows some ele- 
mentary conception of what many of us now hold to 
be the truth of the matter. "The bringing-up of 
women," he says, "is commonly such" that they 
cannot have the necessary qualifications, " for they are 
not brought up in learning in schools, nor trained in 
disputation." And even so, he can ask, " Are there 
not in England women, think you, that for learning 
and wisdom could tell their household and neighbors 
as good a tale as any Sir John there ?' ' For all that, 
his advocacy is weak. " If women's rule is not unnat- 
ural in a sense preclusive of its very existence, it is 
neither so convenient nor so profitable as the govern- 
ment of men. He holds England to be specially suit- 
able for the government of women, because there the 
governor is more limited ana restrained by the other 
members of the constitution than in other places ; and 
this argument has kept his book from being altogether 
forgotten. It is only in hereditary monarchies that he 
will offer any defence of the anomaly. " If rulers 
were to be chosen by lot or suffrage, he would not that 
anv women should stand in the election, but men 



324 JOHN KNOX 

only. " The law of succession of crowns was a law to 
him, in the same sense as the law of evolution is a law 
to Mr. Herbert Spencer ; and the one and the other 
counsels his readers, in a spirit suggestively alike, not 
to kick against the pricks or seek to be more wise than 
He who made them. ' If God has put a female child 
into the direct line of inheritance, it is God's affair. 
His strength will be perfected in her weakness. He 
makes the Creator address the objectors in this not very 
flattering vein : — " I, that could make Daniel, a suck- 
ing babe, to judge better than the wisest lawyers ; a 
brute beast to reprehend the folly of a prophet ; and 
poor fishers to confound the great clerks of the world 
— cannot I make a woman to be a good ruler over 
you .?" This is the last word of his reasoning. Al- 
though he was not altogether without Puritanic leaven, 
shown particularly in what he says of the incomes of 
Bishops, yet it was rather loyalty to the old order of 
things than any generous belief in the capacity of 
women, that raised up for them this clerical champion. 
His courtly spirit contrasts singularly with the rude, 
bracing republicanism of Knox. " Thy knee shall 
bow," he says, "thy cap shall off, thy tongue shall 
speak reverently of thy sovereign." For himself, his 
tongue is even more than reverent. Nothing can stay 
the issue of his eloquent adulation. Again and again, 
'* the remembrance of Elizabeth's virtues" carries him 
away ; and he has to hark back again to find the scent 
of his argument. He is repressing his vehement 

1 Social Statics^ p. 64, etc. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 325 

adoration throughout, until, when the end comes, and 
he feels his business at an end, he can indulge him- 
self to his heart's content in indiscriminate laudation 
of his royal mistress. It is humorous to think that 
this illustrious lady, whom he here praises, among 
many other excellences, for the simplicity of her attire 
and the * ' marvellous meekness of her stomach, ' ' 
threatened him, years after, in no very meek terms, 
for a sermon against female vanity in dress, which she 
held as a reflection on herself. ' 

Whatever was wanting here in respect for women 
generally, there v/as no want of respect for the Queen ; 
and one cannot very greatly wonder if these devoted 
servants looked askance, not upon Knox only, but on 
his little flock, as they came back to England tainted 
with disloyal^ doctrine. For them, as for him, the oc- 
cidental star rose somewhat red and angry. As for 
poor K^nox, his position was the saddest of all. For 
the juncture seemed to' him of the highest importance ; 
it was the nick of time, the flood-water of opportu- 
nity. Not only was there an opening for him in Scot- 
land, a smouldering brand of civd liberty and religious 
enthusiasm which it should be for him to kindle into 
flame with his powerful breath ; but he had his eye 
seemingly on an object of even higher worth. For 
now, when religious sympathy ran so liigh that it 
could be set against national aversion, he wished to 
begin the fusion together of England and Scotland, / 
and to begin it at the sore place. If once the open 

* Hallam''s Const. Hist, of England^ i. 225, note "« 



326 JOHN KNOX 

wound were closed at the Border, the work would be 
half done. Ministers placed at Berwick and such 
places might seek their converts equally on either side 
of the march ; old enemies would sit together to hear 
the gospel of peace, and forget the inherited jealousies 
of many generations in the enthusiasm of a common 
faith ; or — let us say better — a common heresy. For 
people are not most conscious of brotherhood when 
they continue languidly together in one creed, but 
when, with some doubt, with some danger perhaps, and 
certainly not without some reluctance, they violently 
break with the tradition of the past, and go forth from 
the sanctuary of their fathers to worship under the 
bare heaven. A new creed, like a new country, is an 
unhomely place of sojourn ; but it makes men lean 
on one another and join hands. It was on this that 
Knox relied to begin the union of the English and 
the Scotch. And he had, perhaps, better means of 
judging than any even of his contemporaries. He 
knew the temper of both nations ; and already during 
his two years' chaplaincy at Berwick, he had seen his 
scheme put to the proof. But whether practicable or 
not, the proposal does him much honor. That he 
should thus have sought to make a love-match of it 
between the two peoples, and tried to win their incli- 
nation tov\^ard a union instead of simply transferring 
them, like so many sheep, by a marriage, or testa- 
ment, or private treaty, is thoroughly characteristic of 
what is best in the man. Nor was this all. He had, 
besides, to assure himself of English support, secret or 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 327 

avowed, for the reformation party in Scotland ; a deli- 
cate affair, trenching upon treason. And so he had 
plenty to say to Cecil, plenty that he did not care to 
'* commit to paper neither yet to the knowledge of 
many." But his miserable publication had shut the 
doors of England in his face. Summoned to Edin- 
burgh by the confederate lords, he waited at Dieppe, 
anxiously praying for leave to journey through Eng- 
land. The most dispiriting tidings reach him. His 
messengers, coming from so obnoxious a quarter, nar- 
rowly escape imprisonment. His old congregation 
are coldly received, and even begin to look back again 
to their place of exile with regret. " JNIy First Blast," 
he writes ruefully, '* has blov/n from me all my friends 
of England." And then he adds, with a snarl, " The 
Second Blast, I fear, shall sound somewhat more 
sharp, except men be more moderate than I hear they 
are." ^ But the threat is empty ; there will never be 
a second blast — he has' had enough of that trumpet. 
Nay, he begins to feel uneasily that, unless he is to be 
rendered useless for the rest of his life, unless he is to 
lose his rjght arm and go about his great work maimed 
and impotent, he must find some way of making his 
peace with England and the indignant Queen. The 
letter just quoted was written on the 6th of April 
1559 ; and on the loth, after he had cooled his heels 
for four days more about the streets of Dieppe, he 
gave in altogether, and writes a letter of capitulation 

1 Knox to Mrs. Locke, 6th April 1559. Works, vi, 14.. 



328 JOHN KNOX 

to Cecil. In this letter, ' which he kept back until the 
22d, still hoping that things would come right of 
themselves, he censures the great secretary for having 
" followed the world in the way of perdition," char- 
acterizes him as " worthy of hell," and threatens him, 
if he be not found simple, sincere, and fervent in the 
cause of Christ's gospel, that he shall " taste of the 
same cup that politic heads have drunken in before 
him." This is all, I take it, out of respect lor the 
Reformer's own position ; if he is going to be humili- 
ated, let others be humiliated first ; like a child who 
will not take his medicine until he has made his nurse 
and his mother drink of it before him. " But I have, 
say you, written a treasonable book against the regi- 
ment and empire of women. . . . The writing or 
that book I will not deny ; but to prove it treasonable 
I think it shall be hard. ... It is hinted that my 
book shall be written against. If so be, sir, I greatly 
doubt they shall rather hurt nor (than) mend the mat- 
ter. " And here come the terms of capitulation ; for 
he does not surrender unconditionally, even in this 
sore strait : "And yet if any," he goes on, "think 
me enemy to the person, or yet to the regiment, of 
her whom God hath now promoted, they are utterly 
deceived in va^, for the viir acid ous work of God, com- 
forting His afflicted by means of an infirm vessel, I do 
acknowledge, and the power of His most potent hand 1 
will obey. More plainly to speak, if Queen Elizabeth 
shall con f ess , that the extraordinary dispensation of God' s 

1 Knox to Sir William Cecil, loth April 1559. Works, ii. 16, or vi. 15. 



/lyD If IS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 329 

great mercy niaketh that lawful tmto her which both na- 
ture and God' s law do deny to all women, then shall 
none in England be more willing to maintain her law- 
ful authority than I shall be. But if (God's wondrous 
work set aside) she ground (as God forbid) the just- 
ness of her title upon consuetude, laws, or ordinances 
of men, then" — Then Knox will denounce her? 
Not so ; he is more politic nowadays — then, he 
"greatly fears" that her ingratitude to God will not 
go long without punishment. 

His letter to Elizabeth, written some few months 
later, was a mere amplification of the sentences quoted 
above. She must base her title entirely upon the ex- 
traordinary providence of God ; but if she does this, 
" if thus, in God's presence, she humbles herself, so 
will he with tongue and pen justify her authority, as 
the Holy Ghost hath justified the same in Deborah, 
that blessed mother in Israel."^ And so, you see, 
his consistency is preserved ; he is merely applying 
the doctrine of the " First Blast." The argument 
goes thus : The regiment of women is, as before noted 
in our work, repugnant to nature, contumely to God, 
and a subversion of good order. It has nevertheless 
pleased God to raise up, as exceptions to this law, 
first Deborah, and afterward Elizabeth Tudor — whose 
regiment we shall proceed to celebrate. 

There is no evidence as to how the Reformer's ex- 
planations were received, and indeed it is most prob- 
able that the letter was never shown to Elizabeth at 

1 Knox to Queen Elizabeth, July 20th, 1559. Works, vi 47, or ii. 26. 



330 JOHN KNOX 

all. For it was sent under cover of another to Cecil, 
and as it was not of a very courtly conception through- 
out, and was, of all things, what would most excite 
the Queen's uneasy jealousy about her title, it is like 
enough that the secretary exercised his discretion (he 
had Knox's leave in this case, and did not always 
wait for that, it is reputed) to put the letter harmlessly 
away beside other valueless or unpresentable State 
Papers. I wonder very much if he did the same with 
another,^ written two years later, after Mary had come 
into Scodand, in which Knox almost seeks to make 
Elizabeth an accomplice with him in the matter of the 
*' First Blast." The Queen of Scotland is going to 
have that work refuted, he tells her ; and " though it 
were but foolishness in him to prescribe unto her 
Majesty what is to be done," he would yet remind her 
that Mary is neither so much alarmed about her own 
security, nor so generously interested in Elizabeth's, 
" that she would take such pains, unless her crafty 
counsel in so doing shot at a further mark. " There is 
something really ingenious in this letter ; it showed 
Knox in the double capacity of the author of the 
** First Blast" and the faithful friend of Elizabeth ; 
and he combines them there so naturally, that one 
would scarcely imagine the two to be incongruous. 

Twenty days later he was defending his intemperate 
publication to another queen — his own queen, Mary 
Stuart. This was on the first of those three interviews 
which he has preserved for us with so much dramatic 

1 Knox to Queen Elizabeth, August 6th, 1561. Works, vi. 126. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 331 

vigor in the picturesque pages of his history. After 
he had avowed the authorship in his usual haughty 
style, Mary asked : " You think, then, that I have 
no just authority?" The question was evaded. 
"Please your Majesty,'" he answered, " that learned 
men in all ages have had their judgments free, and 
most commonly disagreeing from the common judg- 
ment of the world ; such also have they published by 
pen and tongue ; and yet notwithstanding they them- 
selves have lived in the common society with others, 
and have borne patiently with the errors and imperfec- 
tions which they could not amend." Thus did 
" Plato the philosopher :" thus will do John Knox. 
" I have communicated my judgment to the world : 
if the realm finds no inconvenience from the regiment 
of a woman, that which they approve, shall I not 
further disallow than within mv own breast ; but shall 
be as well content to live under jour Grace, as Paul 
was to live under Nerd. And my hope is, that so 
long as ye defile not your hands with the blood of 
the saints of God, neither J nor my book shall hurt 
either you or your authority," All this is admirable 
in wisdom and moderation, and, except that he might 
have hit upon a comparison less offensive than that 
with Paul and Nero, hardly to be bettered. Having 
said thus much, he feels he needs say no more ; and 
so, when he is further pressed, he closes that part of 
the discussion with an astonishing sally. If he has 
been content to let this matter sleep, he would recom- 
mend her Grace to follow his example with thankful- 



332 JOHN KNOX 

ness of heart ; it is grimly to be understood which of 
them has most to fear if the question should be re- 
awakened. So the talk wandered to other subjects. 
Only, when the Queen was summoned at last to din- 
ner (" for it was afternoon") Knox made his saluta- 
tion in this form of words : " I pray God, Madam, 
that you may be as much blessed within the Com- 
monwealth of Scodand, if it be the pleasure of God, 
as ever Deborah was in the Commonwealth of Is- 
rael." ^ Deborah again. 

But he was not yet done with the echoes of his own 
" First Blast. " In 1571, when he was already near 
his end, the old controversy was taken up in one of a 
series of anonymous libels against the Reformer 
affixed, Sunday after Sunday, to the church door. 
The dilemma was fairly enough stated. Either his 
doctrine is false, in which case he is a " false doctor" 
and seditious ; or, if it be true, why does he " avow 
and approve the contrare, I mean that regiment in 
the Queen of England's person ; which he avoweth 
and approveth, not only praying for the maintenance 
of her estate, but also procuring her aid and support 
against his own native country.?" Knox answered 
the libel, as his wont was, next Sunday, from the pul- 
pit. He justified the " First Blast " with all the old 
arrogance ; there is no drawing back there. The 
regiment of women is repugnant to nature, contumely 
to God, and a subversion of good order, as before. 
When he prays for the maintenance of Elizabeth's es- 

^ Knox's Workb, ii. 278-280. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 333 

tate, he is only following the example of those proph- 
ets of God who warned and comforted the wicked 
kings of Israel ; or of Jeremiah, who bade the Jews 
'Dray for the prosperity of Nebuchadnezzar. As for 
the Queen's aid, there is no harm in that : quia (these 
are his own words) quia omnia inunda mundis : because 
to the pure all things are pure. One thing, in con- 
clusion, he " may not pretermit ;" to give the lie in 
the throat to his accuser, where he charges him with 
seeking support against his native country. " What 
I have been to my country," said the old Reformer, 
** what I have been to my country, albeit this un- 
thankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will 
be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus 
I cease, requiring of all men that have anything to 
oppone against me, that he may (they may) do it so 
plainly, as that I may make myself and all my doings 
manifest to the world. For to me it seemeth a thing 
unreasonable, that, in this my decrepit age, I shall 
be compelled to fight against shadows, and howlets 
that dare not abide the lieht. " ' 

Now, in this, which may be called his Lasl Bias/, 
there is as sharp speaking as any in the " First Blast " 
itself. He is of the same opinion to the end, you see, 
although he has been obliged to cloak and garble 
that opinion for political ends. He has been tack- 
ing indeed, and he has indeed been seeking the favor 
of a queen ; but what man ever sought a queen's 

>• Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland^ edition of the V/otirow 
Society, iii. 5:-54- 



334 JOHN KNOX 

favor with a more virtuous purpose, or with as little 
courtly policy ? The question of consistency is del- 
icate, and must be made plain. Knox never changed 
his opinion about female rule, but lived to regret that 
he had published that opinion. Doubtless he had 
many thoughts so far cut of the range of public sym- 
pathy, that he could only keep them to himself, and, 
in his own words, bear patiently with the errors and im- 
perfections that he could not amend. For example, I 
make no doubt myself that, in his own heart, he did 
hold the shocking dogma attributed to him by more 
than one calumniator ; and that, had the time been 
ripe, had there been aught to gain by it, instead of all 
to lose, he would have been the first to assert that 
Scotland was elective instead of hereditary — " elective 
as in the days of paganism," as one Thevet says in 
holy horror.^ And yet, because the time was not ripe, 
T find no hint of such an idea in his collected works. 
Now, the regiment of women w^as another matter that 
he should have kept to himself ; right or wrong, his 
opinion did not fit the moment ; right or wrong, as 
Aylmer puts it, " the Blast was blown out of season. " 
And this it was that he began to perceive after the ac- 
cession of Elizabeth ; not that he had been wrong, 
and that female rule was a good thing, for he had said 
from the first that " the felicity of some women in 
their empires" could not change the law of God and 
the nature of created things ; not this, but that the 
regiment of women was one of those imperfections of 

^ l^ayle's Historical Dictionary, art. Knox, remark G. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 335 

society which must be borne with because yet they 
cannot be remedied. The thing had seemed so obvi- 
ous to him, in his sense of unspeakable masculine 
superiority, and his fine contempt for what is only 
sanctioned by antiquity and common consent, he had 
imagined that, at the first hint, men would arise and 
shake off the debasing tyranny. He found himself 
MTong, and he showed that he could be moderate in 
his own fashion, and understood the spirit of true com- 
promise. He came round to Calvin's position, in 
fact, but by a different way. And it derogates noth- 
ing from the merit of this wise attitude that it was the 
consequence of a change of interest. We are all 
taught by interest ; and if the interest be not merely 
selfish, there is no wiser preceptor under heaven, and 
perhaps no sterner. 

Such is the history of John Knox's connection with 
the controversy about female rule. In itself, this is 
obviously an incomplete study ; not fully to be under- 
stood, without a knowledge of his private relations with 
the other sex, and what he thought of their position 
in domestic life. This shall be dealt with in another 
paper. 



JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO 
WOMEN. 

II. — Private Life. 

To those who know Knox by hearsay only, I beheve 
the matter of this paper will be somewhat astonishing. 
For the hard energy of the man in all pablic matters 
has possessed the imagination of the world ; he remains 
for posterity in certain traditional phrases, browbeating 
Queen Mary, or breaking beautiful carved work in 
abbeys and cathedrals, that had long smoked them- 
selves out and were no more than sorry ruins, while 
he v/as still quietly teaching children in a country 
gentleman's family. It does not consist with the 
common acceptation of his character to fancy him 
much moved, except with anger. And yet the lan- 
guage of passion came to his pen as readily, whether 
it was a passion of denunciation against some of the 
abuses th^t vexed his righteous spirit, or of yearning 
for the society of an absent friend. He was vehement 
in affection, as in doctrine. I will not deny that 
there may have been, along with his vehemence, 
something shifty, and for the moment only ; that, like 
many men, and many Scotchmen, he saw the world 
and his own heart, not so much under any very 



JOHN KNOX. 337 

Steady, equable light, as by extreme flashes of passion, 
true for the moment, but not true in the long run. 
There does seem to me to be something of this trace- 
able in the Reformer's utterances : precipitation and 
repentance, hardy speech and action somewhat cir- 
cumspect, a strong tendency to see himself in a heroic 
light and to place a ready belief in the disposition of 
the moment. Withal he had considerable confidence 
in himself, and in the uprightness of his own disci- 
plined emotions, underlying much sincere aspiration 
after spiritual humility. And it is this confidence that 
makes his intercourse with women so interesting to a 
modern. It would be easy, of course, to make fun 
of the whole affair, to picture him strutting vainglori- 
ously among these inferior creatures, or compare a re- 
ligious friendship in the sixteenth century with what 
was called, I think, a literary friendship in the eigh- 
teenth. But it is more just and profitable to recog- 
nize what there is sterling and human underneath all 
his theoretical affectations of superiority. Women, 
he has said in his " First Blast,'' are '* weak, frail, 
impatient, feeble, and foolish ;" and yet it does not 
appear that he was himself any less dependent than 
other men upon the sympathy and affection of these 
weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish creatures ; 
it seems even as if he had been rather more dependent 
than most. 

Of those who are to act influentially on their fel- 
lows, we should expect always something large and 
public in their way of life, something more or less 



33 8 JOHN KNOX 

urbane and comprehensive in their sentiment for 
others. We should not expect to see them spend 
their sympathy in idyls, however beautiful. We 
should not seek them among those who, if they have 
but a wife to their bosom, ask no more of woman- 
kind, just as they ask no more of their own sex, if they 
can find a friend or two for their immediate need. 
They will be quick to feel all the pleasures of our as- 
sociation — not the great ones alone, but all. They 
will know not love only, but all those other ways in 
which man and woman mutually make each other 
happy — by sympathy, by admiration, by the atmos- 
phere they bear about them — down to the mere im- 
personal pleasure of passing happy faces in the street. 
For, through all this gradation, the difference of sex 
makes itself pleasurably felt. Down to the most luke- 
warm courtesies of life, there is a special chivalry due 
and a special pleasure received, when the two sexes 
are brought ever so lightly into contact. We love our 
mothers otherwise than we love our fathers ; a sister 
is not as a brother to us ; and friendship between man 
and woman, be it never so unalloyed and innocent, is 
not the same as friendship between man and man. 
Such friendship is not even possible for all. To con- 
join tenderness for a woman that is not far short of 
passionate with such disinterestedness and beautiful 
gratuity of affection as there is between friends of the 
same sex, requires no ordinary disposition in the man. 
For either it would presuppose quite womanly delicacy 
of perception, and, as it were, a curiosity in shades of 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 7^:^^ 

differing sentiment ; or it would mean that he had 
accepted the large, simple divisions of society : a 
strong and positive spirit robustly virtuous, who has 
chosen a better part coarsely, and holds to it stead- 
fastly, with all its consequences of pain to himself and 
others ; as one who should go straight before him on 
a journey, neither tempted by wayside flowers nor very 
scrupulous of small lives under foot. It was in virtue 
of this latter disposition that Knox was capable of 
those intimacies with women that embellished his life ; 
and we find him preserved for us in old letters as a 
man of many women friends ; a man of some expan- 
sion toward the other sex ; a man ever ready to com- 
fort weeping women, and to weep along with them. 

Of such scraps and fragments of evidence as to his 
private life and more intimate thoughts as have sur- 
vived to us from all the perils that environ written pa- 
per, an astonishingly large proportion is in the shape 
of letters to women of his familiarity. He was twice 
married, but that is not greatly to the purpose ; for 
the Turk, who thinks even more meanly of women 
than John Knox, is none the less given to marrying. 
What is really significant is quite apart from marriage. 
For the man Knox was a true man, and woman, the 
eivig-weibliche, was as necessary to him, in spite of all 
low theories, as ever she was to Goethe. He came to 
her in a certain halo of his own, as the minister of 
truth, just as Goethe came to her in a glory of art ; 
he made himself necessary to troubled hearts and 
minds exercised in the painful complications that 



340 JOHN KNOX 

naturally result from all changes in the world's way of 
thinking ; and those whom he had thus helped be- 
came dear to him, and were made the chosen com- 
panions of his leisure if they were at hand, or encour- 
aged and comforted by letter if they were afar. 

It must not be forgotten that Knox had been a 
presbyter of the old Church, and that the many women 
whom we shall see gathering around him, as he goes 
through life, had probably been accustomed, while 
still in the communion of Rome, to rely much upon 
some chosen spiritual director, so that the intimacies 
of which I propose to offer some account, while testi- 
fying to a good heart in the Reformer, testify also to a 
certain survival of the spirit of the confessional in the 
Reformed Church, and are not properly to be judged 
without this idea. There is no friendship so noble, 
but it is the product of the time ; and a world of litde 
finical observances, and little frail proprieties and 
fashions of the hour, go to make or to mar, to stint 
or to perfect, the union of spirits the most loving and 
the most intolerant of such interference. The trick of 
the country and the age steps in even between the 
mother and her child, counts out their caresses upon 
niggardly fingers, and says, in the voice of authority, 
that this one thing shall be a matter of confidence be- 
tween them, and this other thing shall not. And thus 
it is that we must take into reckoning whatever tended 
to modify the social atmosphere in which Knox and 
his women friends met, and loved and trusted each 
other. To the man who had been their priest and was 



A.VD HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 341 

no\v their minister, women would be able to speak 
with a confidence quite impossible in these latter 
days ; the women would be able to speak, and the 
man to hear. It was a beaten road just then ; and I 
dare say we should be no less scandalized at their plain 
speech than they, if they could come back to earth, 
would be offended at our waltzes and worldly fashions. 
This, then, was the footing on which Knox stood with 
his many women friends. The reader will see, as he 
goes on, how much of warm.th, of interest, and of that 
happy mutual dependence which is the very gist of 
friendship, he contrived to ingraft upon this somewhat 
dry relationship of penitent and confessor. 

It must be understood that we know nothing of his 
intercourse with women (as indeed we know little at 
all about his life) until he came to Berwick in 1549, 
when he was already in the forty-fifth year of his age. 
At the same time it is just possible that some of a lit- 
tle group at Edinburgh, with whom he corresponded 
during his last absence, may have been friends of an 
older standing. Certainly they were, of all his female 
correspondents, the least personally favored. He treats 
them throughout in a comprehensive sort of spirit that 
must at times have been a little wounding. Thus, he 
remits one of them to his former letters, " which I 
trust be common betwixt you and the rest of our sis- 
ters, for to me ye are all equal in Christ. ' ' ^ Another 
letter is a gem. in this way. " Albeit," it begins, " al- 
beit I have no particular matter to write unto you, be- 

' Works, iv. 244. 



342 JOHN KNOX 

loved sister, yet I could not refrain to write these few 
lines to you in declaration of my remembrance of you. 
True it is that I have many whom I bear in equal re- 
membrance before God with you, to whom at present 
I write nothing, either for that I esteem them stronger 
than you, and therefore they need the less my rude 
labors, or else because they have not provoked me by 
their writing to recompense their remembrance." ' 
His "sisters in Edinburgh" had evidently to "pro- 
voke' ' his attention pretty constantly ; nearly all his 
letters are, on the face of them, answers to questions, 
and the answers are given with a certain crudity that I 
do not find repeated when he writes to those he really 
cares for. So when they consult him about women's 
apparel (a subject on which his opinion may be pretty 
correctl}- imagined by the ingenious reader for himself) 
he takes occasion to anticipate some of the most offen- 
sive matter of the " First Blast" in a style of real 
brutality.^ it is not merely that he tells them " the 
garments of women do declare their weakness and in- 
ability to execute the office of man," though that in 
itself is neither very wise nor very opportune in such a 
correspondence one would think ; but if the reader 
will take the troubk to wade through the long, tedious 
sermon for himself, he will see proof enough that 
Knox neither loved, nor very deeply respected, the 
women he was then addressing. In very truth, 1 be- 
lieve these Edinburgh sisters simply bored him. He 
had a certain interest in them as his children irx th*» 

- Works, IV. 246. ^ Ih. iv. 221, 



AND JUS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 343 

Lord ; they were continually " provoking him by 
their writing ;" and, if they handed his letters about, 
writing to them was as good a form of publication as 
was then open to him in Scotland. There is one let- 
ter, however, in this budget, addressed to the wife of 
Clerk-Register Mackgil, which is worthy of some fur- 
ther mention. The Clerk-Register had not opened 
his heart, it would appear, to the preaching of the 
Gospel, and Mrs. Mackgil has written, seeking the 
Reformer's prayers in his behalf. " Your husband," 
he answers, " is dear to me for that he is a man in- 
dued with some good gifts, but more dear for that he 
is your husband. Charity raoveth me to thirst his il- 
lumination, both for his comfort and for the trouble 
which you sustain by his coldness, which justly may 
be called infidelity." He wishes her, however, not 
to hope too much ; he can promise that his prayers 
will be earnest, but not that they will be effectual ; it 
is possible that this is to be her " cross" in life ; that 
" her head, appointed by God for her comfort, should 
be her enemy. ' ' And if this be so, well, there is 
nothing for it ; " with patience she must abide God's 
merciful deliverance," taking heed only that she does 
not '* obey manifest iniquity for the pleasure of any 
mortal man. " ^ I conceive this epistle would have 
given a very modified sort of pleasure to the Clerk- 
Register, had it chanced to fall into his hands. Com- 
pare its tenor — the dry resignation not without a hope 
of merciful deliverance therein recommended — with 

1 Works, iv. 24-,. 



344 JOHN KNOX 

these words from another letter, written but the year 
before to two married women of London : " Call first 
for grace by Jesus, and thereafter communicate with 
your faithful husbands, and then shall God, I doubt 
not, conduct your footsteps, and direct your counsels 
to His glory. " ' Here the husbands are put in a very 
high place ; we can recognize here the same hand 
that has written for our instruction how the man is set 
above the woman, even as God above the angels. But 
the point of the distinction is plain. For Clerk- 
Register Mackgil was not a faithful husband ; dis- 
played, indeed, toward religion a " coldness which 
justly might be called infidelity." We shall see in 
more notable instances how much Knox's conception 
of the duty of wives varies according to the zeal and 
orthodoxy of the husband. 

As I have said, he may possibly have made the ac- 
quaintance of Mrs. Mackgil, Mrs. Guthrie, or some 
other, or all, of these Edinburgh friends while he was 
still Douglas of Longniddry's private tutor. But our 
certain knowledge begins in 1549. He was then but 
newly escaped from his captivity in France, after pull- 
ing an oar for nineteen months on the benches of 
the galley Notre Dame ; now up the rivers, holding 
stealthy intercourse with other Scottish prisoners in 
the castle of Rouen ; now out in the North Sea, rais- 
ing his sick head to catch a glimpse of the far-off 
steeples of St. Andrews. And now he was sent down 
by the English Privy Council as a preacher to Berwick- 

1 Works, iv. 221. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 345 

iipon-Tweed ; somewhat shaken in health by all his 
hardships, full of pains and agues, and tormented by 
gravel, that sorrow of great men ; altogether, what with 
his romantic story, his weak health, and his great 
faculty of eloquence, a very natural object for the 
sympathy of devout women. At this happy juncture 
he fell into the company of a Mrs. Ehzabeth Bowes, 
wife of Richard Bowes, of Aske, in Yorkshire, to 
whom she had borne twelve children. She was a re- 
ligious hypochondriac, a very weariful woman, full of 
doubts and scruples, and giving no rest on earth either 
to herself or to those whom she honored with her con- 
fidence. From the first time she heard Knox preach 
she formed a high opinion of him, and was solicitous 
ever after of his society. ' Nor was Knox unresponsive. 
"I have always delighted in your company," he 
writes, *' and when labors would permit, you know I 
have not spared hours to talk and commune with 
you." Often when they had met in depression he 
reminds her, "God hath sent -great comfort unto 
both. " ^ We can gather from such letters as are yet 
extant how close and continuous was their intercourse. 
" I think it best you remain till the morrow," he 
writes once, "and so shall we commune at large at 
afternoon. This day you know to be the day of my 
study and prayer unto God ; yet if your trouble be 
intolerable, or if you think my presence may release 
your pain, do as the Spirit shall move }Ou. . . . 
Your messenger found me in bed, after a sore trouble 

Works, vi. 514. 2 /^_ jjj ^^S. 



346 JOHN KNOX 

and most dolorous night, and so dolor may complain 
to dolor when we two meet. . . . And this is more 
plain than ever I spoke, to let you know you have a 
companion in trouble." ' Once we have the curtain 
raised for a moment, and can look at the two together 
for the length of a phrase. " After the writing of this 
preceding," writes Knox, "your brother and mine, 
Harrie Wycliffe, did advertise me by writing, that 
your adversary (the devil) took occasion to trouble 
you because that I did start back from you rehearsing 
your infii'mities. I renieinber myself so to have done, 
and that is my common consuetude when anything pierc- 
eth or toucheth ??y heart. Call to your mind ivhat I 
did standing at the cupboard at Alnwick. In very deed 
I thought that no creature had been tempted as I was ; 
and when 1 heard proceed from your mouth the ver^ 
same words that he troubles me with, I did wonder 
and from my heart lament your sore trouble, knowing 
in myself the dolor thereof." ^ Now intercourse of 
so very close a description, whether it be religious in- 
tercourse or not, is apt to displease and disquiet a hus- 
band ; and we know incidentally from Knox himself 
that there was some litde scandal about his intimacy 
with Mrs. Bowes. " The slander and fear of men," 
he writes, " has impeded me to exercise my pen so 
oft as I would ; yea, very shame hath holden me from 
your coinpany, when I was most surely persuaded that 
God had appointed me at that time to comfort and feed 
your hungry and afflicted soul. God in His infijide 

1 Works, iii. 352, 357., - //•• iii. 350. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 347 

mercy , ' * he goes on, * * remove not only from me all 
fear that tendeth not to godlmess, but fro?n others sus- 
picion to judge of 7?ie othcnvise than it becometh one 
member to judge of another. ' ' ^ And the scandal, 
such as it was, would not be allayed by the dissension 
in which Mrs. Bowes seems to have lived with her 
family upon the matter of religion, and the counte- 
nance shown by Knox to her resistance. Talking of 
these conflicts, and her courage against " her own 
flesh and most inward affections, yea, against some of 
her most natural friends," he writes it, * to the praise 
of God, he has wondered at the bold constancy which 
he has found in her when his own heart was faint." * 
Now, perhaps in order to stop scandalous mouths, 
perhaps out of a desire to bind the much -loved evan- 
gelist nearer to her in the only manner possible, Mrs. 
Bowes conceived the scheme of marrying him to her 
fifth daughter, Marjorie ; and the Reformer seems to 
have fallen in with it readily enough. It seems to 
have been believed in the family that the whole matter 
had been originally made up between these two, with 
no very spontaneous inclination on the part of the 
bride.' Knox's idea of marriage, as I have said, was 
not the same for all men ; but on the whole, it was 
not lofty. We have a curious letter of his, written at 
the request of Queen Mary, to the Earl of Argyle, on 
very delicate household matters ; which, as he tells 
us, ** was not well accepted of the said Earl." ^ Wo 



1 Works, iii. 390, 391. ^ /^_ [[[_ ^78. 

2 /i>. iii. 142. * /l>. ii. 379. 



34S JOHN KNOX 

may suppose, however, that his own home was regU' 
lated in a similar spirit. I can fancy that for such a 
man, emotional, and with a need, now and again, to 
exercise parsimony in emotions not strictly needful, 
something a little mechanical, something hard and 
fast and clearly understood, would enter into his ideal 
of a home. There were storms enough without, and 
equability was to be desired at the fireside even at a 
sacrifice of deeper pleasures. So, from a wife, of all 
women, he would not ask much. One letter to her 
which has come down to us is, I had almost said, 
conspicuous for coldness. ^ He calls her, as he called 
other female correspondents, " dearly beloved sister ;" 
the epistle is doctrinal, and nearly the half of it bears, 
not upon her own case, but upon that of her mother. 
However, we know what Heine wrote in his wife's 
album ; and there is, after all, one passage that may 
be held to intimate some tenderness, although even 
that admits of an amusingly opposite construction. 
" I think," he says, " I think this be the first letter I 
ever wrote to you." This, if we are to take it liter- 
ally, may pair off with the *' two or three children" 
whom Montaigne mentions having lost at nurse ; the 
one is as eccentric in a lover as the other in a parent. 
Nevertheless, he displayed more energy in the course 
of his troubled wooing than might have been expected. 
The whole Bowes family, angry enough already at the 
influence he had obtained over the mother, set their 
faces obdurately against the match. And I dare say 

1 Works, iii. 394. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 349 

the opposition quickened his inclination. I find him 
writing to Mrs. Bowes that she need no further trouble 
herself about the marriage ; it should now be his busi- 
ness altogether ; it behoved him now to jeopard his 
life " for the comfort of his own flesh, both fear and 
friendship of all earthly creature laid aside." ^ This 
is a wonderfully chivalrous utterance for a Reformer 
forty- eight years old ; and it compares well with the 
leaden coquetries of Calvin, not much over thirty, tak- 
ing this and that into consideration, weighing together 
dowries and religious qualifications and the instancy 
of friends, and exhibiting what M. Bungener calls 
" an honorable and Christian difficulty" of choice, 
in frigid indecisions and insincere proposals. But 
Knox's next letter is in a humbler tone ; he has not 
found the negotiation so easy as he fancied ; he de- 
spairs of the marriage altogether, and talks of leaving 
England, — regards not " what country consumes his 
wicked carcass." " You shall understand, " he says, 
" that this sixth of November, I spoke with Sir Robert 
Bowes" (the head of the famil}^ his bride's uncle) 
" in the matter you know, according to your request ; 
whose disdainful, yea, despiteful, words hath so pierced 
my heart that my life is bitter to me. I bear a good 
countenance with a sore troubled heart, because he 
that ought to consider matters with a deep judgment 
is become not only a despiser, but also a taunter of 
God's messengers — God be merciful unto him ! 
Among others his most unpleasing words, while that 

1 Works, iii. 376 



35 o JOHN KNOX 

I was about to have declared my heart in the whole 
matter, he said, ' Away with your rhetorical reasons ! 
for I will not be persuaded with them.' God knows 
I did use no rhetoric nor colored speech ; but would 
have spoken the truth, and that in most simple man- 
ner. I am not a good orator in my own cause ; but 
what he would not be content to hear of me, God 
shall declare to him one day to his displeasure, unless 
he repent." ' Poor Knox, you see, is quite com- 
moved. It has been a very unpleasant interview. 
And as it is the only sample that we have of how 
things went with him during his courtship, we may 
infer that the period was not as agreeable for Knox as 
it has been for some others. 

However, when once they were married, I imagine 
he and Marjorie Bowes hit it off together comfortably 
^ enough. The little we know of it may be brought 

together in a very short space. She bore him two 
sons. He seems to have kept her pretty busy, and 
depended on her to some degree in his work ; so that 
when she fell ill, his papers got at once into disorder. ^ 
Certainly she sometimes wrote to his dictation ; and, 
in this capacity, he calls her " his left hand." ^ In 
June 1559, at the headiest moment of the Reforma- 
tion in Scotland, he writes regretting the absence of 
his helpful colleague, Goodman, " whose presence" 
(this is the not very grammatical form of his lament) 
*' whose presence I more thirst, than she that is my 

1 Works, lii. 378. 2 //,. vi. 104. 3 lb. v. 5. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 351 

own flesh." ' And this, considering i^^he source and 
the circumstances, may be held as evidence of a very 
tender sentiment. He tells us himself in his history, 
on the occasion of a certain meeting at the Kirk of 
Field, that " he v.as in no small heaviness by reason 
of the late death of his dear bed -fellow, Marjorie 
Bowes." '^ Calvin, condoling with him, speaks of her 
as " a wife whose like is not to be found everywhere" 
(that is very like Calvin), and again, as " the most 
delightful of wives. " We know what Calvin thought 
desirable in a wife, " good humor, chastity, thrift, 
patience, and solicitude for her husband's health," 
and so we may suppose that the first i\Irs. Knox fel' 
not far short of this ideal. 

The actual date of the marriage is uncertain ; but 
by September 1566, at the latest, the Reformer was 
settled in Geneva with his \vifc. There is no fear 
either that he will be dull ; even if the chaste, thrifty, 
patient Marjorie should" not altogether occupy his 
mind, he need not go out of the horse to seek more 
female sympathy ; for behold ! Mrs. Bowes is duly 
domesticated with the young couple. Dr. M'Crie 
imagined that Richard Bowes was now dead, and his 
widow, consequently, free to live where she would ; 
and where could she go more naturally than to the 
tiouse of a married daughter .? This, however, is not 
the case. Richard Bowes did not die till at least two 
years later. It is impossible to believe that he ap- 
proved of his wife' s desertion, after so many years of 

* Works, vi. 27. '-^ lb. ii. 138. 



35^ JOHN KNOX 

marriage, after twelve children had been born to 
them ; and accordingly we find in his will, dated 
1558, no mention either of her or of Knox's wife.^ 
This is plain sailing. It is easy enough to understand 
the anger of Bowes against this interloper, who had 
come into a quiet family, married the daughter in 
spite ol the lather's opposition, alienated the wife frora 
the husband and the husband's religion, supported her 
in a long course of resistance and rebellion, and, after 
years of intimacy, already too close and tender lor any 
jealous spirit to behold without resentment, carried 
her away with him at last into a foreign land. But it 
is not quite easy to understand how, except out of 
sheer weariness and disgust, he was ever brought to 
agree to the arrangement. Nor is it easy to square the 
Reformer's conduct with his public teaching. We 
have, for instance, a letter addressed by him, Craig, 
and Spottiswood, to the Archbishops of Canterbury 
and York, anent " a wicked and rebellious woman,'" 
one Anne Good, spouse to " John Barron, a minister 
of Christ Jesus his evangel," who, " after great rebel- 
lion shown unto him, and divers admonitions given, 
as well by himself as \>y others in his name, that she 
should in no wise depart from this realm, nor from his 
house without his license, hath not the less stubbornly 
and rebelliously departed, separated herself from his 
society, left his house, and withdrawn herself from 
this realm." ^ Perhaps some sort of license v/as ex- 

1 Mr. Laing's preface, to. the sixth, volume of Knox's. Works, p» Ixii. 

2 Works, vL 534. 



AXD HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 353 

torted, as I have said, from Richard Bowes, wearv 
with years of domestic dissension ; but setting that 
aside, the words employed with so much righteous in- 
dignation by Knox, Craig, and Spottiswood, to de- 
scribe the conduct of that wicked and rebellious 
woman, ]\Irs. Barron, would describe nearly as exactly 
the conduct of the religious r^Irs. Bowes. It is a little 
bewildering, until we recollect the distinction between 
faithful and unfaithful husbands ; for Barron was " a 
minister of Christ Jesus his evangel," while Richard 
Bowes, besides being own brother to a despiser and 
taunter of God's messengers, is shrewdly suspected to 
have been " a bigoted adherent of the Roman Catho- 
lic faith," or, as Knox himself would have expressed 
it, "a rotten Papist." 

You would have thought that Knox was now pretty 
well supplied with female society. But we are not 
yet at the end of the roll. The last year of his sojourn 
in England had been spent principally in London, 
where he was resident as one of the chaplains of Ed- 
ward the Sixth ; and here he Coasts, although a 
stranger, he had, by God's grace, found favor before 
many. ^ The godly women of the metropolis made 
much of him ; once he writes to ]\Irs. Bowes that her 
last letter had found him closeted with three, and he 
and the three women were all in tears. ^ Out of all, 
however, he had chosen two. " God," he writes to 
them, * ' brought us in such familiar acquaintance, that 
your hearts were incensed and kindled with a special care 

1 Works, iv. 220. 2 /jj_ ^i^ 280. 



354 JOHN KNOX 

over me, as a vioiher iiseth to he over her natural child ; 
and my heart was opened and compelled in your pres- 
ence to be more plain than ever I was to any." ^ 
And out of the two even he had chosen one, Mrs. 
Anne Locke, wife to Mr. Harry Locke, merchant, 
nigh to Bow Kirk, Cheapside, in London, as the ad- 
dress runs. If one may venture to judge upon such 
imperfect evidence, this was the woman he loved best. 
I have a difficulty in quite forming to myself an idea 
of her character. She may have been one of the three 
tearful visitors before alluded to ; she may even have 
been that one of them who was so profoundly moved 
by some passages of Mrs. Bowes' s letter, which the 
Reformer opened, and read aloud to them before they 
went. " O would to God," cried this impressionable 
matron, " would to God that I might speak with that 
person, for I perceive there are more tempted than 
I." ^ This may have been Mrs. Locke, as I say ; but 
even if it were, we must not conclude from this one 
fact that she was such another as Mrs. Bowes. All 
the evidence tends the other way. She was a woman 
of understanding, plainly, who followed political events 
with interest, and to whom Knox thought it worth 
while to write, in detail, the history of his trials and 
successes. She was religious, but without that morbid 
perversity of spirit that made religion so heavy a bur- 
den for the poor-hearted Mrs. Bowes. More of her I 
do not find, save testimony to the profound affection 
that united her to the Reformer. So we find him 

1 V^orks, iv. 220. ^ lb. iii. 380. 



A. YD HIS RE [.AT IONS TO WOMEN. 355 

writin^i^ to her from Geneva, in such terms as these : 
— " You write that your desire is earnest to see me. 
Dear sister, if I should express the thirst and lafigicor 
which I have had for your presence, I should appear to 
pass measure. . . . J'ea, I iveep and rejoice in re- 
viemhrance of you j but that would evanish by the 
comfort of your presence, which I assure you is so 
dear to me, that if the charge of this httle flock here, 
gathered together in Christ's name, did not impede 
me, my coming should prevent my letter."^ I say 
that this was written from Geneva ; and yet you will 
observe that it is no consideration for his wife or 
mother-in-law, only the charge of his little flock, that 
keeps him from setting out forthwith for London, to 
comfort himself with the dear presence of Mrs. Locke. 
Remem.ber that was a certain plausible enough pretext 
for ]\Irs. Locke to come to Geneva — " the most per- 
fect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the 
days of the Apostles" — for we are now under the 
reign of that ** horrible monster Jezebel of England," 
when a lady of good orthodox Sentiments w^as better 
out of London. It was doubtful, however, whether 
this was to be. She was detained in England, partly 
by circumstances unknown, " partly by empire of her 
head," Mr. Harry Locke, the Cheapside merchant. 
It is somewhat humorous to see Knox struggling for 
resignation, now that he has to do with a faithful hus- 
band (for Mr. Harry Locke was faithful). Had it 
been otherwise, ** in my heart," he says, "I could 

1 Works, iv. 238 



356 JOHN KNOX 

have wished— yea, ' ' here he breaks out, * ' yea, an^ 
cannot cease to wish — that God would guide you to 
this place." ^ And after all, he had not long to wait, 
for, whether Mr. Harry Locke died in the interval, or 
was wearied, he too, into giving permission, five 
months after the date of the letter last quoted, " Mrs. 
Anne Locke, Harry her son, and Anne her daughter, 
and Katharine her maid," arrived in that perfect 
school of Christ, the Presbyterian paradise, Geneva. 
So now, and for the next two years, the cup of Knox's 
happiness was surely full. Of an afternoon, when the 
bells rang out for the sermon, the shops closed, and 
the good folk gathered to the churches, psalm-book 
in hand, we can imagine him drawing near to the 
English chapel in quite patriarchal fashion, with Mrs. 
Knox and Mrs. Bowes and Mrs. Locke, James his 
servant, Patrick his pupil, and a due following of chil- 
dren and maids. He might be alone at work all 
morning in his study, for he wrote much during these 
two years ; but at night, you may be sure there was a 
circle of admiring women, eager to hear the new par- 
agraph, and not sparing of applause. And what work, 
among others, was he elaborating at this time, but the 
notorious " First Blast " } So that he may have rolled 
out in his big pulpit voice, how women were weak, 
frail, impatient, feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable, 
cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel, and how 
men were above them, even as God is above the 
angels, in the ears of his own wife, and the two dearest 

1 Works, Iv. atD. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 357 

friends he had on earth. But he had lost the sense of 
incongruity, and continued to despise in theory the 
?ex he honored so much in practice, of whom he 
chose his most intimate associates, and whose courage 
he was compelled to wonder at, when his own heart 
was faint. 

We may say that such a man was not worthy of his 
fortune ; and so, as he would not learn, he was taken 
away from that agreeable school, and his fellowship of 
women was broken up, not to be reunited. Called 
into Scotland to take at last that strange position in 
history which is his best claim, to commemoration, he 
was followed thither by his wife and his mother in-law. 
The wife soon died. The death of her daughter did 
not altogether separate ]\Irs. Bowes from Knox, but 
she seems to have come and gone between his house 
and England. In 1562, however, we fmd him char- 
acterized as " a sole man by reason of the absence of 
his mother-in-law, ]\Irs'. Bowes," and a passport is 
got for her, her man, a maid, and " three horses, 
whereof two shall return," as well as liberty to take all 
her own money with her into Scotland. This looks 
like a definite arrangement ; but whether she died at 
Edinburgh, or went back to England yet again, I can- 
not find. With that great family of hers, unless in 
leaving her husband she had quarrelled with them all, 
there must have been frequent occasion for her pres- 
ence, one would think. Knox at least survived her ; 
and we possess his epigraph to their long intimacy, 
given to the world by him in an appendix to his latest 



358 JOHN- KNOX 

publication, I have said in a former paper that Knox 
was not shy of personal revelations in his published 
works. And the trick seems to have grown on him. 
To this last tract, a controversial onslaught on a Scot- 
tish Jesuit, he prefixed a prayer, not very pertinent to 
the matter in hand, and containing references to his 
family which were the occasion of some wit in his ad- 
versary's answer ; and appended what seems equally 
irrelevant, one of his devout letters to Mrs. Bowes, 
with an explanatory preface. To say truth, I believe 
he had always felt uneasily that the circumstances of 
this intimacy were very capable of misconstruction ; 
and now, when he was an old man, taking " his good 
night of all the faithful in -both realms," and only de- 
sirous " that without any notable sclander to the 
evangel of Jesus Christ, he might end his battle : for 
as the world was weary of him, so wa.s he of it \ ' — in 
such a spirit it was not, perhaps, unnatural that he 
should return to this old story, and seek to put it right 
in the eyes of all men, ere he died. " Because that 
God," he says, " because that God now in His mercy 
hath put an end to the battle of my dear mother, Mis- 
tress Elizabeth Bowes, before that He put an end to my 
wretched life, I could not cease but declare to the 
world what was the cause of our great familiarity and 
long acquaintance ; which was neither flesh nor 
blood, but a troubled conscience upon her part, which 
never suffered her to rest but when she was in the 
company of the faithful, of whom (from the fnst hear- 
ing of the word at my mouth) she judged me to be 



AND H/S RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 359 

one. . . . Her company to me was comfortable 
(yea, honorable and profitable, for she was to me and 
m\ne a mother), but yet it was not without some 
cross ; for besides trouble and fashery of body sus- 
tained for her, my mind was seldom quiet, for doing 
somewhat for the comfort of her troubled con- 
science." ^ He had written to her years before, from 
his first exile in Dieppe, that '* only God's hand" 
could withhold him from once more speaking with her 
face to face ; and now, when God's hand has indeed 
interposed, when there lies between them, instead of 
the voyageable straits, that great gulf over which no 
man can pass, this is the spirit in which he can look 
back upon their long acquaintance. She was a re- 
ligious hypochondriac, it appears, whom, not without 
some cross and fashery of mind and body, he was 
good enough to tend. He might have given a truer 
character of their friendship, had he thought less of 
his own standing in public estimation, and more of 
the dead woman. But he was in all things, as Burke 
said of his son in that ever-memorable passage, a pub- 
lic creature. He wished that even into this private 
place of his affections posterity should follow him with 
a complete approval ; and he was willing, in order 
that this might be so, to exhibit the defects of his lost 
friend, and tell the world what weariness he had sus- 
tained through her unhappy disposition. There is 
something here that reminds one of Rousseau. 

I do not think he ever saw Mrs. Locke after he left 

1 Works, vi. gts, Si4. 



3tJo JOHN KNOX 

Geneva ; but his correspondence with her continued 
for three years. It may have continued longer, of 
course, but I thin!.: the last letters we possess read like 
the last that would be written. Perhaps ]\Irs. Locke 
was then remarried, for there is much obscurity over 
her subsequent history. For as long as their intimacy 
was kept up, at least, the human element remains in 
the Reformer's life. Here is one passage, for exam- 
ple, the most likable utterance of Knox's that I can 
quote : — Mrs. Locke has been upbraiding him as a 
bad correspondent. " My remembrance of you," he 
answers, " is not so dead, but I trust it shall be fresh 
enough, albeit it be renewed by no outward token for 
one year. 0/ nature, I am churlish ; yet one thing I 
ashame not to affirm, that familiarity once thoroughly con- 
tracted was never yet broken 07i my default. The cause 
may he that I have rather need of all, than that any have 
need of me. However it {that) be, it cannot be, as I 
say, the corporal absence of one year or two that can 
quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in 
Christ Jesus, which half a year did engender, and al- 
most two years did nourish and confirm. And there- 
fore, whether I write or no, be assuredly persuaded 
that I have you in such memory as becometh the 
faithful to have of the faithful." ' This is the truest 
touch of personal humility that I can remember to 
have seen in all the five volumes of the Reformer's col- 
lected works : it is no small honor to IMrs. Locke that 
his affection for her should have brought home to him 

1 Works, vi. II. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN. 361 

this unwonted feeling of dependence upon others. 
Everything else in the course of the correspondence 
testifies to a good, sound, downright sort of friendship 
between the two, less ecstatic than it was at first, per- 
haps, but serviceable and very equal. He gives her 
ample details as to the progress of the work of refor- 
mation ; sends her the sheets of the Conftssion of Faiih, 
"in quairs," as he calls it; asks her to assist him 
with her prayers, to collect money for the good cause 
in Scotland, and to send him books for himself — books 
by Calvin especially, one on Isaiah, and a new revised 
edition of the " Institutes." " I must be bold on 
your liberality," he writes, " not only in that, but in 
greater things as I shall need." ^ On her part she 
applies to him. for spiritual advice, not after the man- 
ner of the drooping Mrs. Bowes, but in a more posi- 
tive spirit, — advice as to practical points, advice as to 
the Church of England, for instance, whose ritual he 
condemns as a " mingle-mangle." ^ Just at the end 
she ceases to write, sends him "a token, without 
writing." " 1 understand your impediment, " he an- 
swers, " and therefore I cannot complain. Yet if you 
understood the variety of my temptations, I doubt not 
but you would have written somewhat." ^ One letter 
more, and then silence. 

And I think the best of the Reformer died out with 
that correspondence. It is after this, of course, that 
he wrote that ungenerous description of his intercourse 
with Mrs. Bowes. It is after this, also, that we come 

^ Works, vi. pp. 21, 101, 108, 130. ^ lb. vi. 83, ^ Ih. vi, isg. 



562 JOHN KNOX 

to the unlovely episode of his second marriage. He 
had been left a widower at the age of fifty-five. Three 
years after, it occurred apparently to yet another pious 
parent to sacrifice a child upon the altar of his respect 
for the Reformer. In January 1563, Randolph writes 
to Cecil : " Your Honor will take it for a great won- 
der when I shall write unto you that Mr. Knox shall 
marry a very near kinswoman of the Duke's, a Lord's 
daughter, a young lass not above sixteen years of 
T.ge." ^ He adds that he fears he will be laughed at 
for reporting so mad a story. And yet it was true ; 
and on Palm Sunday, 1564, Margaret Stewart, daugh- 
ter of Andrew Lord Stewart of Ochiltree, aged seven- 
teen, was duly united to John Knox, Minister of 
St. Giles's Kirk, Edinburgh, aged fifty-nine, — to the 
great disgust of Queen Mary from family pride, and I 
would fain hope of many others for more humane con- 
siderations. " In this," as Randolph says, " I wish 
he had done otherwise.'"' The Consistory of Geneva, 
" that most perfect school of Christ that ever was on 
earth since the days of the Apostles, ' ' were wont to 
forbid marriages on the ground of too great a dispro- 
portion in age. I cannot help wondering whether the 
old Reformer's conscience did not uneasily remind 
him, now and again, of this good custom of his re- 
ligious metropolis, as he thought of the two-and- forty 
years that separated him from his poor bride. Fitly 
enough, we hear nothing of the second Mrs. Knox 
until she appears at her husband's deathbed, eight 

1 WorV:5, vi. $32. 



AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN, 363 

years after. She bore him three daughters in the in- 
terval ; and I suppose the poor child's martyrdom was 
made as easy for her as might be. She was ** ex- 
tremely attentive to him" at the end, we read ; and 
he seems to have spoken to her with some confidence. 
Moreover, and this is very characteristic, he had 
copied out for her use a little volume of his own de- 
votional letters to other women. 

This is the end of the roll, unless we add to it 
Mrs. Adamson, who had delighted much in his com- 
pany " by reason that she had a troubled conscience," 
and whose deathbed is commemorated at some length 
in the pages of his history. ' 

And now, looking back, it cannot be said that 
Knox's intercourse with women was quite of the high- 
est sort. It is characteristic that we find him more 
alarmed for his own reputation than for the reputation 
of the women with whom he was familiar. There was 
a fatal preponderance of self in all his intimacies : 
many women came to learn from him, but he never 
condescended to become a learner in his turn. And 
so there is not anything idyllic in these intimacies of 
his ; and they were never so renovating to his spirit as 
they might have been. But I believe they were good 
enough for the women. I fancy the women knew 
what they were about when so many of them followed 
after Knox. It is not simply because a man is always 
fully persuaded that he knows the right from the wrong 
and sees his way plainly through the maze of life, 

1 Works, i. 246. 



364 JOHN KNOX 

great qualities as these are, that people will love and 
follow him, and write him letters full of their ** earnest 
desire for him" when he is absent. It is not over a 
man, whose one characteristic is grim fixity of purpose, 
that the hearts of women are " incensed and kindled 
with a special care," as it were over their natural chil- 
dren. In the strong quiet patience of all his letters 
to the weariful Mrs. Bowes, we may perhaps see one 
cause of the fascination he possessed for these religious 
women. Here was one whom you could besiege all 
the year round with inconsistent scruples and com- 
plaints ; you might write to him on Thursday that 
you were so elated it was plain the devil was deceiving 
you, and again on Friday that you were so depressed 
it was plain God had cast you ofi forever ; and he 
would read all this patiently and sympathetically, and 
give you an answer in the most reassuring polysyl- 
lables, and all divided into heads— who knows.? — like 
a treatise on divinity. And then, those easy tears of 
his. There are some women who like to see men cry- 
ing ; and here was this great-voiced, bearded man of 
God, who might be seen beating the solid pulpit every 
Sunday, and casting abroad his clamorous denuncia- 
tions to the terror of all, and who on the Monday 
would sit in their parlors by the hour, and weep with 
them over their manifold trials and temptations. Now- 
adays, he would have to drink a dish of tea with all 
these penitents. ... It sounds a little vulgar, as the 
past will do, if we look into it too closely. We could 
not let these great folk of old into our drawing-rooms. 



AND HIS RELAl^IONS TO 

Queen Elizabeth would positively not be eligible for a 
housemaid. The old manners and the old customs 
go sinking from grade to grade, until, if some mighty 
emperor revisited the glimpses of the moon, he would 
not find any one of his way of thinking, any one he 
could strike hands with and talk to freely and Vv^ithout 
offence, save perhaps the porter at the end of the street, 
or the fellow with his elbows out who loafs all day be- 
fore the public-house. So that this little note of vul- 
garity is not a thing to be dwelt upon ; it is to be put 
away from us, as we recall the fashion of these old in- 
timacies ; so that we may only remember Ivnox as 
one who was very long suffering with women, kind to 
them in his own way, loving them in his own way — 
and that not the worst way, if it was not the best — and 
once at least, if not twice, moved to his heart of hearts 
by a woman, and giving expression to the yearning he 
had for her society in words that none of us need be 
ashamed to borrow. 

And let us bear in mind always that the period I 
have gone over in this essay begins when the Reformer 
was already beyond the middle age, and already broken 
in bodily health : it has been the story of an old man's 
friendships. This it is that makes Knox enviable. 
Unknown until past forty, he had then before him 
five-and-thirty years of splendid and influential life, 
passed through uncommon hardships to an uncommon 
degree of powder, lived in his own country as a sort of 
king, and did what he would with the sound of his 
voice out of the pulpit. And besides all this, such a 



366 JOHN KNOX. 

following of faithful women ! One would take the 
first forty years gladly, if one could be sure of the last 
thirty. IMost of us, even if, by reason of great strength 
and the dignity of gray hairs, we retain some degree 
of public respect in the latter days of our existence, 
will find a falling away of friends, and a solitude mak- 
ing itself round about us day by day, until we are left 
alone with the hired sick nurse. For the attraction of 
a man's character is apt to be outlived, like the attrac- 
tion of his body ; and the power to love grows feeble 
in its turn, as well as the power to inspire love in 
others. It is only with a few rare natures that friend- 
ship is added to friendship, love to love, and the man 
keeps growing richer in affection — richer, I mean, as 
a bank may be said to grow richer, both giving and 
receiving more — after his head is white and his back 
weary, and he prepares to go down into the dust ci 
death. 



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St. Ives. 

The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. i2mo, $1.50. 
" St. Ives " is a story of action and adventure in the author's most buoyant and 
stirring manner. One does not expect to find commonplaces m Stevenson, but even 
his most ardent admirers may well be surprised at the grim tragedy in the opening 
chapters of "St. Ives." 

In the South Seas. 

With Map. i2mo, $1.50. 
This volume is made up of selections from the interesting sketches contributed 
to periodicals by Mr. Stevenson, narratmg his experiences and observations m the 
M^rq.ie^as (the scene of .Melville's "Typee"), Paumotus. and the Gilbert Islands, 
gathered in the course of two cruises on the yacht " Casco " (1888) and the schooner 
" Equator" (1889I. 

Weir of Hermiston. 

i2mo, $1.50. 
"Surely no son of Scotland has died, leaving with his last breath a worthier 
tribute to the land he loved." — Sidney Colviv. 

Poems and Ballads. 

i2mo, $1.50. 

Comprising all the poems contained in " A Child's Garden of Verses," 
"Ballads," '"Underwoods." and, in addition, over forty pieces of verse written 
since the publication of these volumes. 

Kidnapped. 

Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the year 1 751. 
With 16 full-page illustrations by William Hole. i2mo, $1.50. 
" Mr. .Stevenson has never appeared to greater ad anfage than in ' Kidnapped.' 
No better book of its kind has ever been written." — T/t€ Nation. 

David Balfour. 

Being Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad. l2mo, $i. 50. 
" Surely the ruest and noblest work of fiction in the English language produced 
in the year." — Nezu York Times. 

Treasure Island. 

A Story Ci the Spanish Main. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.00. 

" Primarily it is a book for boys, but it is a book which will be delightful to all 
grown men who have the sentiment of treasure hunting. . . Like all Mr. Steven- 
son's good work, it is touched with genius. ... A masterpiece of narrative." 

— The Saturday Review. 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
The Master of Ballantrae. 

A Winter's Tale. With lo full-page illustrations by William Hole. 
i2mo, $1.50. 

*• We have here a fresh and striking example of Mr. Stevenson's remarkable 
intellectual versatility and flexibility. It is a fine novel, realistic and romantic 
by turns, marked by rare skill of draughtmanship and vigor of imagination, 
an honor to the author and a credit to literature."— AVa*/ 1 ork Tribune. 

The Wrecker. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. With 12 
full-page illustrations by William Hole and W. L. Metcalf. 
l2mo, $1.50. 

" It seems much the most enticing romance at present before the veorld." 

— Andrew Lang. 

Prince Otto. 

A Romance. i2mo, $1.00. 

" A graceful and unusual romance, full of surprises, full of that individuality 
which is so charming in every page this author has published, and so unhack- 
neyed that one knows not what to expect from any one paragraph to the next." 

— Boston Courier. 

The Merry Men, 

And Other Tales and Fables, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

l2mo, $1.25. 

" Everything in the collection is worthy of its remarkable author." 

— The Independent. 

The Black Arrow. 

A Tale of the Two Roses. Illustrated by Will H. Low and Alfred 
Brennan. i2mo, $1.25. 

"It has all the good qualities of his other stories — their invention, their 
spirit and their charming English. The hand that wrote ' Kidnapped ' is vis- 
ible in its stirring pages."— R. H. Stoddard. 

New Arabian Nights. 

i2mo, $1.25. 
" There is something in his work which engages and fixes the attention from 
the first page to the last, which shapes itself before the mind's eye while reading, 
and which refuses to be forgotten long after the book has been put away." 

— R. H. Stoddard. 

The Dynamiter. 

More New Arabian Nights. By Robert Louis Stevenson and 
Mrs. Stevenson. i2mo, $1.25. 

*' There is no writer in the English language to-day who can alternately touch 
the springs of tears and laughter as does this man, who weaves as delicious fancies 
as ever passed through the brain." — Philadelphia Times. 

Island Nights' Entertainments. 

Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25. 

" The book will be reckoned among the finest of Mr. Stevenson's works. The 
art of it is so nearly perfect that it seems spontaneous, and the matter is absolutely 
unique." — Boston Beacon. 

The Wrong Box. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. i2mo, $1.25. 

" It brings out more strongly than any of Mr. Stevenson's preceding works his 
facile wit and irresistible h.\xa\Qxr— Chicago Tribune. 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSOIST 

Virginjibus Puerisque. 

And Other Papers. i2mo, $1.25. 

" Avowedly the book of a young man taking account of life from the starting 
point. There is a great deal in it which is individual, suggestive, and direct from 
life. There are sayings about Truth of Intercourse which penetrate a long way. 
There are passages concerning youth which probe to the quick some of its ailments 
and errors. —Atlantic Monthly. 

Memories and Portraits. 

I2mc, $1.25. 

" The grace and delicacy, the just artistic instinct, the curious aptness of phrase 
which distinguish these essays, can be fully appreciated only by a reader who loves 
to go back to them again and again after a first perusal." — Lippincotf s Magazine, 

Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. 

i2mo, $1.25. 

*• The glimpses that we get of Mr. Stevenson himself in this book are charming 
and add greatly to its edifying and entertaining character. The style of the nar- 
rative is original, lucid, and spirited." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, 

Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 

i2mo, $1.25. 
Contents : Victor Hugo's Romances, Some Aspects of Robert Burns, Walt 
Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Yoshida Torajiro, Francois Villon, Charles of 
Orleans, Samuel Pepys, John Knox, and Women. 

An Inland Voyage. 

i2mo, $1.00. 
*' Mr. Stevenson does not make canoeing itself his main theme, but delights in 
charming bits of description that, in their close attention to picturesque detail, 
remind one of the work of a skilled ' genre ' painter. Nor does he hesitate .... 
to indulge in a strain of gently humorous reflection that furnishes some of the 
pleasantest passages of the book." — 'Good Literature. 

Travels with a Donkey 

In the Cevennes. i2mo, $1.00. 

" The author sees everything with the eye of a philosopher. He has a steady 
flow of humor that is as apparently spontaneous as a mountain brook, and he 
views a landscape or a human figure, not only as a tourist seeking subjects for a 
book, but as an artist to whom the slightest line or tint carries a definite impres- 
sion." — Boston Courier. 

The Silverado Squatters. 

With a frontispiece by Walter Crane. i2mo, $1.00. 

" The interest of the book centres in graphic style and keen observation of the 
author. He has the power of describing places and characters with such vividness 
that you seem to have made personal acquaintance with both."— iV. Y. World. 

Across the Plains. 

With Other Memories and Essays. i2mo, $1.25. 

" The book sets us a.ijrain to wondering at the facility with which Mr. Stevenson 
makes phrases and builds paragraphs ; moreover, we renew our admiration for a 
style as subtle as ether and as brilliant as fire opal."— 77^^ Independent. 

A Foot=Note to History. 

Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. i2mo, $1.50. 

"A story well worth reading. We have first a description of the curious and 
complex elements of discord, both native and foreign, in Samoa, and then a mar- 
velous story of how these discordant elements have been at work during eight 
jeaxs."— Public Opinion. 



/^•^z 



p 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The following volumes^ i6mo, green buckram^ 6 volumes, 

in a box, $6^0. 

Fables. i6mo, $1.00. 

In these delightful fables will be found a new and interesting expression of Mr. 
Stevenson's genius. They are here collected and issued for the first time in book 
form, attractively bound, in uniform style with the '* Vailima Letters." 

Vailima Letters. 2 vols., i6mo, $2.25. 

"The work is full of charm, of brightness, of changeful light and shadow and 
thick-coming fancies. Again it is readable in a high degree, and will, we make no 
doubt, delight thousands of readers." — London Spectator. 



The Ebb Tide. i6mo, $1.25. 

The Amateur Emigrant. 

i6mo, $1.25. 



M a c a i r e . A Melodramatic 
Farce. By R. L. Stevenson 
and W. E. Henley. i6mo, 
$1.00. 



IN SPECIAL EDITIONS. 

A Child*s Garden of Verses. 

New Edition. Profusely and beautifully illustrated by Charles 
Robinson. i2mo, $1.50. 
"An edition to be recommended in every way. An artist possessing a graceful 
fancy and a sure decorative sense has supplied a profusion of illustrations. The 
letter-press is beautiful."— -A^. Y. Evening Post. 



A Christmas Sermon. i6mo, 

net, 50 cents. 
Ballads. i2mo, $1.00. 
A Child's Garden of Verses. 

l2mo, $1.00. 

Virginibus Puerisque. 

Cameo Edition. i6mo, $1.25. 

Underwoods. i2mo, $1.00. 



Treasure Island. Illustrated, 
i2mo, $1.25. 

Three Plays. By R. L. Ste- 
venson and W. E. Henley. 
8vo, $2.00 net. 

The Suicide Club. {^Ivory 
Series 7^ i6mo, 75 cents. 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 
i2mo, $1.00. 



THE THISTLE EDITION. 

Sold only by Subscription. Each vol. 8vo. $2.00 net. 

In this luxurious edition of Mr. Stevenson's works, the Novels 
and Tales occupy twelve volumes, the Travels and Essays four, the 
Poems are complete in a single volume, and the Letters and Mis- 
cellanies seven, or 24 volumes in all. Each volume has a photo- 
gravure or etched frontispiece. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

•S3->57 Fifth Avenue, - . - New York 



